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Drawn and engraved for ^^The Spur of Monmouth, 


THE 


Spur of Monmouth; 


OR, 


WASHINGTON IN ARMS. 


A HISTORICAL AND CENTENNIAL ROMANCE OF THE REVO-> 
LUTION, FROM PERSONAL RELATIONS AND DOCU- 
MENTS NEVER BEFORE MADE PUBLIC. 




BY 


AN EX -PENSION AGENT. 






c- /• ^ ^ 

ZOU I 


PHILADELPHIA: 



CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 

624, 626 & 628 Market Street. 

I 8 7 6. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, by Clayton, Rhmsen & 
Haffelfinger, in the office of the Librarian ot 
Congress, at Washington, D. G. 


Selheimer &. Moore, Printers, 
501 Chestnut Street. 


TO 

Hon. EDWARDS PIERREPONT, 

United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Pleni- 
potentiary AT THE Court of St. James, 

WHO APPROPRIATELY ASSUMED THE DUTIES OF HIS OFFICE 
AS A CONSERVATOR OF THE PLEASANT RELATIONS OF 
THE TWO GREAT ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATIONS, 

ON INDEPENDENCE DAY OF THE CENTEN- 
NIAL YEAR, (4TH JULY, 1 8 / 6 ,) 

This Centennial Record of the Revolution is 

^cgpect|nllg 

BY his friend and SERVANT OF MANY YEARS, 

THE EDITOR. 

iii 


PREFACE. 


T O those who read the opening chapters of this work, no 
other Preface can possibly be necessary, except in the car- 
rying out of a custom which has the endorsement of both an- 
tiquity and universality. The materials for it have been largely 
drawn, as there alleged, from the personal recollections of one 
who, half a century ago, dispensed the moderate pensions ac- 
corded by the United States Government to a large number 
of those who had fought so bravely to establish it. Here and 
there may be found the effect of advancing age, in defective 
recollection of some special incident; but it is believed that 
very few, if any, statements of importance, making the pretence 
of reality, will be found liable to that charge. A leading desire 
has been to embody, in a connected series of pictures, some of 
the important events, and many of the minor, of what many 
have considered the turning-point of the Revolution, — and in 
doing this, to paint the men of that time as they were, so far as 
the lapse of one hundred years could permit the necessary near- 
ness of view. On the one point of most consequence — the 
characters and actions of such leading actors in the great strug- 
gle as fall within the scope of the work, including the most 
notable figure of all, the Father of his Country, — the fact may 
be depended upon, that the relation is far nearer to a veritable 
history than a historical romance, though obvious inferences 
have sometimes taken the places of statements. As to the 
purely romantic incidents — though the imaginary characters 
employed have nearly all been derived from real personages, 
nothing more is claimed for them than that they partake of the 
spirit and life of the time, their presence thus aiding the general 
effect of the collective picture, without straining after incident 
or outraging probability. In one detail of’ plot there may be 
found a somewhat marked resemblance to certain portions of 
one of Scott’s minor novels — “St. Ronan’s Well;” but any 
charge of plagiarism, apart from the alleged reality of the inci- 
dents embodied in this work, will scarcely be brought, in face 
of the well-ascertained fact that the novel in question, if it ever 
met the eyes of the relator, has not done so within more than 
forty years. The Editor. 

Philadelphia, 1876. 


iv 


THE SPUR OF MONMOUTH 


CHAPTER I. 

THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION. 

When my second proposition is known, my first 
will be implicitly believed. I am an old man — a 
very old man, with the hair long since gone from my 
crown, and that still lingering upon my temples thin 
as silken tissues and white as the snow-drift. Yes, I 
am old — very old. Whatever I had to do in the 
world, it would seem, should long since have been 
completed ; and yet 1 feel, to-day, as I have felt for 
many a long year, that there is a duty uncompleted, 
which only I of all the world can do, and without the 
doing of which I can not pass peaceably to my rest. 

Born almost at the commencement of the present 
century, I came into life when the echoes of the can- 
non of Yorktown had scarcely yet died upon the 
national ear. The old men surrounding me in my 
boyhood had been more or less active sharers in the 
great struggle, from its beginning; even the men of 
middle age with whom I w^s thus early thrown in 
contact, had passed through many of the scenes in 
their own childhood. Hacked swords in dingy leath- 


I 


6 


The Spur of Momfiouth. 

ern scabbards, old kings-pieces, powder-horns and 
shot-pouches, that had done duty from Quebec to 
King’s Mountain, yet hung plentifully on the wooden 
hooks over the wide-mouthed fireplaces ; coats of 
honor still hung up in closets, with the blue not all 
gone from the fabric, and something of the buff still 
remaining of the facings, in which blood-stains and 
bullet-holes bore record of Long Island, of Brandy- 
wine, of Saratoga or the Cowpens. By the wdnter 
fire, the stories of the great struggle w'ere by no 
means exhausted or grown tedious; and Warren, 
Washington, Lafayette, Putnam, Wayne, Harry Lee, 
Sumter, Marion and Morgan were the heroes of rela- 
tions at first hand, capable of stirring the blood to 
the very fever of admiration. Maimed and crippled 
men hobbled about on crutch or cane, whose wounds 
had been received in fights now grown as classic as 
those of Marathon or Thermopylae ; women were 
still pointed out, yet in the vigor of life, who had 
displayed heroism entitling them to be ranked with 
Joan of Arc or the yet unfamed Maid of Saragossa; 
Arnold’s treason was still related with personal 
knowledge and personal scorn, as the one blot on a 
glorious record of courage and achievement. The 
great battles of Napoleon were sounding, far away ; 
but they were too distant to dwarf the recollection 
of those so lately fought at home, and no other and 
awful shadow had yet fallen to obscure the men or 
the deeds of the Revolution. 

Such, briefly sketched, were the surroundings of 
my boyhood. And yet I shall have told nothing of 
that which later so shaped my life and studies, and 
that which really, at so late a day, gives birth to this 
narrative, without stating another feature of that far- 


• The Men of the Revolution. 


7 


away time. For still, then, in old wooden chests and 

frayed hair-trunks, in garret and closet of the humble 

farm-houses of the early century, lay muster-rolls, 

and secret orders, and ill-kept journals, and letters 

home from battle-fields, capable of solving many a 

doubt with reference to some point in the struggle, 

but little likely ever to find an examiner, much less 

a collator and a chronicler. An examiner, however, 

they found — some of them, at least ;* and to-day the 

gist of some of those records, never susnected by 

those who since then have written h ^ ‘ its of the 

.lat 1 a*" 

war and of the United States of ^ . va, dwells in a 

retentive memory, all the more ciearly because they 
have rarely been vented and frittered out in conver- 
sation. 

I sat, a wonder-eyed and curly-headed boy, on the 
knees of those Men of the Revolution, listening with 
rapt attention, not the less ardent because only half 
appreciative, to the stories of Whig devotion and 
Tory cruelty — of the ambush, the chase, the house- 
burning, the hanging. I drank in the hatred of the 
red-coat, difficult to Idse through long days of man- 
hood ; I heard the Hessian denounced as an incar- 
nate demon, 'beside whom the British soldier and 
even the native loyalist was almost an angel of 
mercy. I inhaled the very atmosphere of the time, 
and thought, in my boyish fancy, that the task 
should one day be mine, to write for the world those 
records so certain otherwise to pass away and be lost 
forever, through the incapacity of those who gave 
the verbal material, and their dropping off, one day, 
into the silence and the forgetfulness of the grave. 

Then came manhood. A few years further removed 
from the time of the conflict, and with a shadow 


8 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

.thrown between, in the second war of 1812-15. But 
that shadow was comparatively transient, and alto- 
gether insignificant. What of glory had been gath- 
ered from it, soon merged back into the great meed 
laid up from the first struggle. But one result of 
importance followed, in the better organization of 
the pension interest, and those arrangements by 
which all who could supply good proof of having 
taken ar oart in the first conflict, or the widows 
they h behind them, came to receive a pittance, 

howe hand of the government 

which tne^ '<r ^faygV^^ed to establish. And in and 
through this ne., ^;aase of policy, I was thrown more 
closely and for a more considerable period, into the 
company of the patriot soldiery of the first war, than 
I could have been through any other series of events 
whatever. 

For I became a pension-agent. At first merely an 
assistant to the nominal dispenser of that noble 
though limited charity — afterward the actual dispen- 
ser in my own person. Nearly one hundred veterans 
drew their half-yearly pay through my hands, at one 
time : I lived to pay fifty, to pay twenty, to pay ten, 
to pay one, to pay none ! Thank God, more than 
for almost any other blessing of my life, that I can 
say to-day that no penny of their pittance, beyond 
the merest costs of collecting from the central 
authority at Washington, ever went to enrich me — 
that no man of them all lived one penny the poorer, 
or that no widow found one penny less of comfort 
from the amount awarded to her, through my being 
the channel of disbursement ! 

This is a boast — I know it. But so is all that I am 
writing. Many years ago some poet said : 


The Men of the Revolution. 


9 


" ’ Tis pride with these old men 
To tell what they have seen — 

Of battle-fields again 
With the harvest fresh and green : 

’Twill be pride, when we are old, 

To say that in our youth 
We heard the tales they told 
And looked on them in their truth.” 

And it is quite as much in the asserl:iv]|‘‘ of that 
secondary pride, now so rightfully become^ * own, 
as in the necessity of explanation, that I am ^ .nning 
these recollections. I have enjoyed, during a long 
life, quite the usual advantages of mankind, and 
found the opportunities for quite the average accu- 
mulations and exhibitions of pride. But I am prouder, 
at this moment, of having so frequently taken in my 
own, in confidential friendship, the hands of so many 
of the Men of the Revolution — of having' heard the 
events of the “times that tried men’s souls,” from 
their own lips — than of any other earthly privilege 
ever accorded me. 

From their words I not only learned to know many 
of the events of the great struggle, as they have 
never been recorded in books or passed into tradi- 
tional history, but also to know many of the leading 
spirits who had moved and managed it, very differ- 
ently from what they had come to be known through 
relations many times removed, and through the mis- 
representations of policy or the romance of distance. 
The Washington of the world was a calm, cold, stat- 
uesque being, faultless, but as unloving and unat- 
tractive as faultless ; the Washington whom the 
soldiers who had fought beside him drew, was the 
very noblest of men, as the thinkers of all countries 
have grown to regard him, but intensely human, with 
1 * 


10 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


faults on.y less conspicuous than his great virtues, 
and one who, though proud to the very verge of 
arrogance, had that in mind and manner which won 
quite as much as it commanded. And so of many 
others, secondary to the Great Commander, whose 
fame has, come quite as veiled and unreal to the 
knowledge of the world, with the truth never to be 
generally known until the secrets of all lives as well 
as those of all hearts shall be revealed. 

I have said that I believed myself, in boyhood, 
destined to write for the world some of those histo- 
ries coming to me in the confidences of my youth 
and early manhood. Alas! — who of us fulfills in 
manhood the dreams of his early days ? Much more 
than half a century has passed since the laying to 
heart of the supposed duty: the first words, in pur- 
suance of the intention, are being written, on the 
verge of the Centennial, and when for thirty years 
there has been scarcely one remaining who acted in 
the Revolution or even saw one of its latest scenes ! 

Conscious that in the Centennial is my last oppor- 
tunity to fulfill any portion of my long-deferred duty, 
— aware that advancing age has joined with the 
cares and labors of life to make me far less capable 
of the task than I would have been had I written 
thirty or forty years earlier — but believing that I 
have that within my knowledge which should not 
be allowed to pass to the grave with me, and confi- 
dent that in the main I still remember correctly the 
most important incidents of one of the turning-points 
of the War of Independence, — I essay the relation 
of that event in the war and that episode in the 
career of the Father of his Country, entitled to be 
called “The Spur of Monmouth.” 


CHAPTER II. 

THE REASON FOR THE “ SPUR OF MONMOUTH.” 

Those general facts of my early life, giving to me 
a peculiar fitness for a relation of the events of the 
Revolution, especially as they took place in the Mid- 
dle States (where, be it said, most of my pensioners 
had had their residence and chiefly fought), have now 
been succinctly stated, — as also the impression early 
made upon my own mind, and rather strengthened 
than removed during the lapse of many inactive years, 
that the whole involved a duty as well as a fitness. 
It now remains for me to confess, before proceeding 
with the relation at hand, how this particular theme 
has taken precedence of all others — why this pecu»- 
liar series of events have come to be traced, in pref- 
erence to others possessing quite as much interest in 
and of themselves. Why the “ Spur of Monmouth,” 
rather than any other of a score of titles, each having 
behind it its array of contemporaneous adventures. 

The fact is, that the title is not my own, any more 
than are the circumstances to which it refers. They 
were long ago derived from the communications 
of others; this has come to me, many years later, 
from another source equally foreign to myself, as 
something around which to crystallize a certain pro- 
portion of the information already acquired. Were 
I seeking for personal reputation, it is very sure that 
I should not make the acknowledgment ; as I have 


12 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


heard it commonly alleged, in that literary world to 
which I can only make what may be called a border- 
approach, that those are equally over-squeamish and 
unwise, who make too free confession of the sources 
supplying them with ideas and hints for their man- 
agement. 

I have naturally (the former statements being re- 
membered) had the habit in more or less activity, 
since boyhood, of la/ing up in scrap-books whatever 
of interest chanced to fall into my hands, in news- 
papers or otherwise, of data connected with the Rev- 
olution. Many and many a garret have I ransacked, 
long since coming to manhood, but before the old 
dormer-windowed and gambrel-roofed houses con- 
taining them began to pass away so rapidl)^ — for 
stained and torn broadsides, yellowed by time, or 
equally old almanacs in like condition, which might 
contain something worthy of my scissors and the 
paste-brush following close behind it, and bearing on 
the lives or fortunes of those who had thus become 
my especial heroes, in a proprietorship as harmless 
as helpless. And more than once it has been my 
privilege to extract from my storehouse some record 
otherwise unattainable, and by sending it to some 
one engaged in the preparation of important docu- 
ments, or by forwarding the substance of it to some 
newspaper of the da5^ to correct the public mind (a 
portion of it, at least) on some point that seemed to 
me of consequence. 

Not many years ago, though how many I do not 
now remember, a poem fell into my hands, bearing 
the same title as that borne by this story. I have 
never learned the name of the writer, the date of its 
first publication, nor the periodical in which it may 


The Reason for the “ Sfury 


13 


have first appeared; I merely found it, “floating 
about,” as the phrase is, in some current newspaper, 
and transferred it to my scrap-book, where it already 
begins to yellow as I open it for the purposes of this 
recital. It details the finding of a spur on the battle- 
field of Monmouth, with certain speculations suc- 
ceeding, of no consequence to the inquiry involved. 
The more material verses are those following ; 

“’Twas a little brass half-circlet, 

Deep gnawed by rust and stain, 

That the farmer’s urchin brought me. 

Plowed up on old Monmouth’s plain : 

On that spot where the hot June sunshine 
Once a fire more deadly knew. 

And a bloodier color reddened 
Where the red J une roses blew : — 

“ Where the moon of the early harvest 

Looked down through the shimmering leaves, 

And saw where the reaper of battle 
Had gathered his human sheaves : 

Old Monmouth, so touched with glory — 

So tinted with burning shame, — 

As Washington’s pride we remember. 

Or Lee’s long-tarnished name. 

“ ’Twas a little brass half-circlet ; 

And knocking the rust away. 

And clearing the ends and the middle 
From their burial-shroud of clay, 

I saw, through the damp of ages. 

And the thick, disfiguring grime. 

The buckle-heads and the rowel 
Of a spur of the olden time. 

And I said — ‘ What gallant horseman. 

Who revels and rides no more, 

Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty, 

On his heel that weapon wore? 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

Was he riding away to his bridal, 

When the leather snapped in twain ? 

Was he thrown, and dragged by the stirrup. 
With the rough stones crushing his brain ? ’ 

' Then I thought of the Revolution, 

Whose tide still onward rolls : 

Of the free and the fearless riders 
Of the ‘ times that tried men’s souls.’ 

What if, in the day of battle 
That raged and rioted here. 

It had dropped from the foot of a soldier. 

As he rode in his mad career ? 

-What if it had ridden with Forman, 

When he leaped through the open door. 

With the British dragoon behind him. 

In his race o’er the granary-floor? 

What if — but the brain grows dizzy 
With the thoughts of the rusted spur — 

What if it had fled with Clinton, 

Or charged with Aaron Burr ? 

But bravely the farmer’s urchin 
Had been scraping the rust away ; 

And, cleansed from the soil that swathed it. 
The spur before me lay. 

Here are holes in the outer circle : 

No common heel it has known. 

For each space, I see by the setting, 

Once held some precious stone. 

And here — not far from the buckle — 

Do my eyes deceive their sight ? — 

Two letters are here engraven. 

That initial a hero’s might ! 

‘ G. W. ! ’ Saints of heaven ! — 

Can such things in our lives occur? 

Do I grasp such a priceless treasure ? 

Was this George Washington s spnrf 


The Reason for the “ SpurT 


15 


Did the brave old Pater Patria 
Wear that spur, like a belted knight — 
Wear it, through gain and disaster, 

Fronm Cambridge to Monmouth fight? 
Did it press his steed in hot anger 
On Long Island’s day of pain ? 

Did it drive him, at terrible Princeton, 
’Tween two storms of leaden rain? 


“ And here — did the buckle loosen, 

And no eye look down to see. 

When he rode, to blast with the lightning 
The defiant eyes of Lee ? 

Did it fall, unfelt and unheeded, 

When that fight of despair was won, 

And Clinton, worn and discouraged. 

Crept away at the set of sun ? 

" The lips have long been silent. 

That could send an answer back ; 

And the spur, all broken and rusted. 

Has forgotten its rider’s track ! 

I only know that the pulses 
Leap hot, and the senses reel. 

When I think that the Spur of Monmouth 

May have clasped George Washington’s heel ! ” 

“ Heavens ! ” I said to myself, within a few mo- 
ments after first reading that poem, “what a strange 
coincidence of fancy with the possible fact ! And 
what a title would that of the poem supply for a 
romance embodying the facts within my knowledge 
and suspected by few others, connected with Wash- 
ington, the campaign of 1778, and the Day of Mon- 
mouth ! " Many times afterward, when chancing to 
see the poem, the same thought came again to me, 
without other result. And then — and this not many 
years ago — something more occurred, throwing the 


1 6 The Spur of Monmouth. 

other coincidence quite into shadow, and making this 
story little else than a necessity. 

One day an intimate friend returned from Europe, 
after an absence of several months, including a win- 
ter spent in London and the south of England. An 
early evening after his return was enjoyed by the two 
of us, alone together most of the time, at my resi- 
dence. 

“ Do you remember a longish poem that you once 
read me, I think from your scrap-book, called the 
‘Spur of Monmouth.^’” he asked, at a certain point, 
of our conversation. 

“Perfectly well — it is one of my favorites, from 
association,” I answered. “ But why do you ask 1 
And what can that possibly have to do with the 
places you have been speaking of, in England ? ” 

“ Much — much more than you could imagine,” was 
his repl}'". “ Not many weeks ago, I am very confi- 
dent that I held the spur to which that poem refers, 
in my hands.” 

“Good God!” I exclaimed, springing from my 
chair with a suddenness which age has not corrected. 

“ You are certainly either quizzing me, or dreaming.” 

“ Neither,” he said. “ Please get the scrap-book, 
if you have it at hand, and read the poem to me.” 

It need scarcely be said that I did so, my whole 
being alive with wondering excitement, not unmixed 
with doubt. When I had finished, he said : 

“ Yes, it is undoubtedly as I thought. The descrip- 
tion in the poem tallies wonderfully well with the 
reality, as I held it in my hands. The spur which 
Washington lost, either on the battle-field of Mon- 
mouth, or very near to that place, and which the 
writer of that poem merely surmised to be his, hangs 


The Reasoji for tJie “ Spur'" 


17 


in reverent honor, beside relics of old English battles 
and the Crusades, on the wall of a baronial residence, 
the name of which I will tell you by-and-by, in Dor- 
setshire. It was procured, from this country, some 
five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, having been 
found, no doubt, accidentally, as described in the 
poem. And there are members of the old and hon- 
orable family holding that baronial residence, who 
will tell you, if you ever again find yourself in Eng- 
land and visit the place, that the ‘ Spur of Monmouth ’ 
belongs there, in recollection and in honor of the 
woman whom George Washmgton best loved in all his 
life! — better than Martha Dandridge: better, even, 
than Mary Phillipse.” 

The particulars of the conversation more immedi- 
ately succeeding need not be recounted : they will be 
necessarily interwoven with information otherwise 
obtained, in the relation thus introduced at so much 
length, but still with no more particularity than seems 
requisite to a full understanding of the whole. 

It is only proper to add, that in the story following, 
necessarily thrown into the form of a romance, while 
most of the important points are strictly historical as 
to truth and veracity, many of the connecting links 
have of course been supplied from imaginative con- 
jecture, deducing what would seem inevitably to have 
been the case in certain instances, from other events 
known to have occurred, and warranting such inter- 
pretations of actions and motives unrevealed. It is 
believed that no privilege has been assumed, beyond 
the admitted one of the historical romancer, and that 
no hero of the Revolution, worthy of the name, will 
be found to have derived other than honor from the 
revealment of things heretofore so carefully hidden. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE QUAKER-ABODE OF CATHARINE TRAFFORD. 

In the winter of 1777-1778 — now known to have 
been the turning-point in the whole conflict for 
American independence — there stood, on the south 
bank of the Schuylkill, some five miles from Norris- 
town on the opposite side of the river, and perhaps 
two or three from Valley Forge, a house of good 
size, long since swept away ; and surrounded by well- 
kept grounds, denoting ease if not indeed wealth, 
now long returned to the condition of an agricultural 
hillside, and the very site of house and grounds for- 
gotten, except as some delver into the history of that 
time finds cause to recall their past existence. 

Perhaps half a mile from the Schuylkill, a little 
eastward of that abrupt southerly bend which the 
river makes opposite to the little hamlet of Valley 
Forge, and only a short distance below the spot 
where Washington made his crossing in the Decem- 
ber of the former year, fleeing from the close beset- 
ment of an overwhelmingly superior force, at White- 
marsh, — “Cedar Grove,” as the people of the sur- 
rounding country knew the residence of Ephraim 
Reed, Quaker and moderate loyalist, held a very 
desirable location, that in less troublous times would 
have commanded the admiration of every passer, 
whether as a place of abode or from the capabilities 
of its agricultural surroundings. 


The Quaker- Abode. 


19 


Among the early settlers along the Schuylkill, 
some of the hardy and active Swedes had pitched 
their tents in that special portion of a country equally 
picturesque to the view and encouraging in the pros- 
pect of reward for labor done ; and from this early 
settlement it resulted, that while the primeval woods 
still held their place over much of the surrounding 
country and even so near as the whilom Forge of old 
Isaac Potts, in the Valley, a considerable space of 
land in this immediate vicinity had been so long 
cleared as to have lost much of its original wildness, 
the beauty of the location being thus brought into 
rare prominence. 

Cedar Grove, so named from the near proximity 
of a grove of stout and wide-branching cedars, occu- 
pied the very top of a gentle hill, sloping southward 
toward the road leading away at some miles distance 
to the famous King-of-Prussia tavern, and also slop- 
ing northward^ toward the Schuylkill River. The 
house thus commanded, from the rear, a view over a 
pretty, half-wooded valley, bounded by the rugged 
heights of the Valley Hills ; and from the front could 
be seen the winding Schuylkill, glimmering through 
the skirting woods at so little a distance, and kept 
iii view until in a bend at several miles away, ap- 
peared the single steeple and scattered roofs of the 
large village of Norristown. 

Originally, as was evident. Cedar Grove had been 
built of logs throughout, though much larger than 
the ordinary cabin of the rough settler ; and that 
first erection would seem to have taken place at least 
thirty or forty years before the Revolution.’ Grad- 
ually, in change of ownership and increase of the 
wealth of those holding it, it had materially altered 


20 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


in appearance ; the log inclosure of the rear and 
gables still remaining uncovered though carefully 
plastered and kept in excellent repair, but the front 
entirely metamorphosed by the covering of the orig- 
inal logs of that side with clapboards, the heighten- 
ing of the chambers through the addition of a low- 
sweeping gambrel-roof with dormer-windows, and 
the erection of a low, broad piazza extending the 
whole length of the front and sheltering alike from 
sun and storm. At the eastern end, a lane swept up 
from the King-of-Prussia Road, giving access from 
the public thoroughfare, and with some neat log out- 
buildings beyond it; and at the western the house 
was abutted by a large and well-appointed garden, 
showing both the useful and ornamental purposes of 
such an inclosure in a perfection rare for the section 
and the time, and only needing the trim and careful 
paled yard in front, its sward broken by two fine 
single cedars and some clusters of lilacs and other 
hardy flowering bushes, to complete the picture of a 
home certainly presided over by comfortable means 
and giving more than a suspicion of corresponding 
good taste. 

This, when the summer sun shone broad on the 
silver Schuylkill, and on waving wood and sloping 
lawn. A very different aspect, it will be evident, was 
presented to the view, when the trees of the neigh- 
boring woods were leafless, groaning and creaking 
under the weight of incumbering ice, or tossing like 
the unquiet arms of restless sleepers, in the fierce 
wintry wind. When the pleasant green lawns were 
hidden by thick-lying snow, and the river lay help- 
less under an icy sheet that seemed like the cold 
shroud of its burial, When the trim garden was 


The Quaker- Abode. 


21 


temporarily a desolation ; when seldom a figure 
. showed without the abode ; and when only the thick 
wreath of smoke pouring out from the chimney- 
tops, suggested the residence of man or the possi- 
‘ bility of comfort in the midst of the wintry chill and 
the snowbound landscape 

So it was, with all the attractive summer features 
only something to be remembered and again wish- 
ed for, and with the desolation of winter more 
than ordinarily pronounced, in a season of great se- 
verity for the latitude, — that Cedar Grove lay under 
the cold westering sun, on the afternoon of the 13th 
of January, 1778. So it was, with the night shutting 
gloomily down under the promise of additional snow, 
and with the winter winds making moan through 
the tough cedars and around the solid gables, that 
the house passed from possible view, at any con- 
siderable distance, except as the lights of the dim 
lamps fell upon the wnite curtains shrouding the 
front windows, and threw a faint reflection out 
upon the snow covering the lawn. 

But a very different scene was that within, even 
if feebly lit by the same lamps and the ruddier 
glow of the firelight. A large, square, uncarpeted 
room — uncarpeted except upon one side of the 
huge fireplace, piled high with blazing logs, with 
one of much larger size, the traditional “back-log” 
of the new country, forming a colossal complement 
to the whole, and the glowing and crackling oak 
filling with coal and flame almost all the space from 
the back-log to the great fire-dogs of iron, — stand- 
^ ing well forward on the brick hearth and preventing 
• the falling outward of any portion of the heaped mass 
of combustion. Tiic I'urniture old, massive and dark 


22 


The Spur of Monmouth, 

of hue ; the chairs varied of wood and leather, in bot- 
toms, and the great backed settle with no upholstery 
to relieve its primitive hardness ; while the dark 
carven bureau in that end of the apartment farthest 
from the fire, would have been almost a shadow 
against the equally dark •wainscoting of painted 
boards, but for the glimmering of the firelight on its 
bright brass handles. On the side of the fireplace 
farthest from the outer door, a few feet square of 
thick, coarse rug or drugget, with two chairs there- 
on, the occupancy of which showed that even that 
approach to effeminacy could only be allowed for the 
use of the gentler sex. 

The room contained three persons. 

On the side of the fire nearest the door, in a large 
wooden arm-chair without cushion, with an oil lamp 
beside him on a little round table, and a heavy book 
in large text supported upon one upraised knee, 
Ephraim Reed sat reading, with much apparent edifi- 
cation, to judge from the occasional pleased glim- 
mer of his aging e.yes through his iron-rimmed 
spectacles, and the yet more frequent twitchings of 
the close mouth, so easily seen through the entire 
absence of beard. He was tall, a trifle hard-faced, 
rather gaunt than portly ; and his graying hair, worn 
long and without queue, told at once of sixty to six- 
ty-five years, and of his religious profession. Brown 
Quaker clothes, of coarse cloth, and hose of the same 
color with broad buckles at knee, and great slippers 
of blanketing, made all that was notable, else, of his 
outer man, except a huge bunch of seals falling be- 
low the vest and indicating the carrying of his equally 
huge silver watch with something more of show than 
was ordinarily thought seemly by the disciples of 


The Quaker- Abode. 


23 


George Fox, either then or at a later period. Such 
looked the well-to-do Friend, one of the many of his 
sect who failed to take any part in the patriot move- 
ment, and who supplied, indeed, an important con- 
stituency in the favoring of King George and his 
cause, ostensibly through dislike to warfare in any 
cause whatever, but, it is to be believed, really and ma- 
terially through that interested conservatism which 
preferred the old status, even if held objectionable, 
to any change which could possibly peril property 
and lead to personal discomfort and eventual danger. 

Let this statement not be misunderstood. There 
is certainly no intention of impugning the physical 
courage of that large section of the Society of 
Friends, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, which 
either held to the crown or at least furnished no 
assistance to the patriot cause. Cowards, in the or- 
dinary sense of that word, the followers of George 
Fox have never been. Witness the calm boldness 
with which the men of that persuasion, in many of 
the early settlements, placed themselves unarmed in 
the midst and the power of savages from whom the 
hardy armed pioneers shrunk with a constant sense 
of insidious personal danger, — declaredly, and nO 
doubt actually, trusting in an Arm more mighty 
than that of any human combatant, and doing what 
they believed to be their duty, in the face of any 
peril that could confront them. Witness, too, in 
the ranks of the patriots, Nathaniel Greene; the 
Quaker general, and many men of lesser note but 
equal courage, who proved, in the direst extremity, 
that the warm blood was living within them, once 
it should be awakened like that of the “world’s 
people.” But the truth remains, that the Quaker 


24 


The Spur of Moii77ioufh. 


of the Revolution was, as a sectarian, a conservative, 
and thus a Tory of at least the milder sort, with- 
holding from the struggling colonies an element 
of strength which would have been formidable to 
their enemies, and even throwing that strength 
into the adverse scale, in many instances other 
than that of the well-compensated descendants 
and heirs of William Penn. So much-said, let us 
return to the single individual representing an 
order, in the person of Ephraim Reed, and to the 
other members of his family. 

These were, besides the necessary servants of the 
household, only two in number, and both present at 
the moment when the Quaker landholder smiled 
complacently over his book by the winter fire. 

Has it been said that Ephraim Reed was a trifle 
hard of feature ? This could certainly not be alleged 
of Hannah Reed, his wife, who occupied one of the 
two chairs on the opposite side of the fireplace, sit- 
ting placidly silent, with the warm glow of the fire 
ruddying her broad, round face, and her fingers busy 
at the then almost universal employment of women in 
their leisure hours — that of knitting upon hose or 
mitten. Nearly of the same age as her husband, there 
seemed still scarcely a line upon cheek or brow, to 
indicate that more than sixty summers had passed 
over the quiet, comely countenance — so notable is 
indeed the difference marked upon that purest and 
clearest of all tablets, the face of woman, by the hab- 
itual indulgence of the passions of the world, or their 
suppression even if without extinction. A plain cap 
of white, with the border showing a narrow edge of 
frilling certainly due to some other hand than her 
own, covered the back of her still glossy hair; her 


The Qua her- Abode. 


25 


dress of coarse stuff was of sober dark gray ; and the 
still shapely hands engaged in the knitting, had little 
wool mitts of the same color covering the backs, 
though leaving the fingers at full liberty. 

Very different, in every detail, was the third of the 
group by the midwinter fire, on that special occa- 
sion. Occupying the only utensil in the room show- 
ing the least approach to the idea of luxury, a heav- 
ily-framed rocking-chair with wooden arms and 
leathern seat, Mistress Catharine Traffbrd was gently 
and noiselessly indulging her body with the slight 
swaying motion of the chair, the while her bare white 
hands, by no means notably small though among the 
most perfect in shape ever moulded by the Great 
Artificer, were weaving into life, with needle and 
card and colored wools, leaves and flowers whose 
bright colors bore remembrance of the past season 
of verdure, and seemed to mock the dead, wintry 
desolation fallen without. Beside her, too, was a 
table, larger than that holding the lamp of the 
Quaker; and on it lay some of her unused materials, 
and stood a lamp of large size and antique shape, 
really vieing with the flame of the fire in giving the 
principal light to the apartment. 

If there could be any sense of incongruity con- 
nected with that which may seem to have its right 
anywhere and everywhere, then might the presence 
of this woman have seemed to be singularly out of 
place with her companions and surroundings. For 
nothing could have been less in keeping, either with 
the simply furnished though comfortable room, or 
the two grave and methodical personages who occu- 
pied it with her. Tall — almost very tall, as was evi- 
dent even while she retained a sitting position, and 
2 


26 


The Spur of Afonmouth. 


would be yet more plainly shown when the length of 
limb manifested itself on arising — there was nothing, 
either in face or figure, correspondent with those fear 
tures which usually accompany great stature in 
women. Even in comparison with her height, she 
was by no means fragile-looking — rather inclining 
to plumpness than the reverse, a fact rendered even 
more certain by those shapely but well-fleshed white 
hands, showing dimples at the knuckles as they 
changed position in the progress of her embroid- 
ery. No girl, in the ordinary acceptation of the 
phrase, as the beholder perceived at a second 
glance, noting that indefinable something which is 
absent in the human bud but reveals itself so clearly 
to the observer after the bursting into the full flower 
of womanhood. But scarcely was the observer able, 
even yet, to place her where she really belonged as 
to age — at a year or two, perhaps even more, past 
thirty. Almost perfectly classical as to feature, and 
still failing to reach that standard, owing to too 
marked a fullness at the end of the nose, giving an 
impression that it was slightly retroussd, as was by no 
means the case, — and to the marked fullness of the 
red lips, which seemed to have literally absorbed all 
the color of the face. The cheeks were of a waxen 
pearl in complexion, difficult of flush, and smooth 
and unblemished in texture as they could have been 
in her very earliest girlhood. To this there was 
needed a crown ; and it was splendidly supplied in the 
wealth of rich and glossy hair, half way between gold 
and chestnut and combining the brilliancy of both, 
coiled into something approaching a massive coro- 
net, and surmounting the forehead, broad in compar- 
ison to its height, with brows much darker than the 


TJie Quaker- Ahodf. 


27 


hair ana even darker than seemed warranted by the 
eyes of tender brown that could so easily suggest 
black under quick impulses of feeling. This really 
regal stature and beaut)^ demanding its fit place on 
a throne instead of filling the rough rocking-chair of 
the Quaker’s dwelling, was robed very simply, and 
yet with the same unfitness for the place and her sur- 
roundings, as the personality itself displayed. For 
her gown was of some soft, warm material, dead- 
black as very crape, but somewhat redundant in 
flouncing and ornamentation of a corresponding 
color; and the onl)'^ relief, rather a startling one, was 
at the throat, where a narrow erect ruff of delicate 
muslin rose above the robe, in whiteness almost 
glaring as contrasted with its dusk, but forming a 
suggestive image of the inner leaves from which 
might arise the stately stem of a beautiful flower, — 
while below it, and at the throat proper, a knot of 
scarlet riband, fastened with an antique head in 
cameo and gold setting, completed at once the relief 
and the splendid incongruity. 

Such, to the outward eye and that inner sense 
which it has so large a share in ruling, was Catha- 
rine Traflbrd, whose name has seldom crept into the 
printed records of the Revolution, and who has not 
even been spoken of in tradition with that frequency 
which the importance of her connection with the 
struggle at a momentous period would certainly have 
involved, had not considerations foreign to herself 
withheld alike the pen and the tongue. Such was 
she to the outward eye and the mere senses dictated 
to by it : what lay be5'’ond, is far more difficult to un- 
derstand and yet more diflficult to convey in words, 
except as actions imperfectly known and often ar- 


28 


The Spur of Mo7i7nouth. 


rived at by guesswork and comparison may convey 
some approach to the truth. -“ One thing, and one 
thing only, seems certain : had this woman not lived, 
or had she been other than she was, interests involv- 
ing the fate of a nation might have been turned in a 
widely dilferent direction ; or we must believe so, if 
failing to recognize the truth that the Almighty Hand 
is able to carry out its ends through the means of 
another instrument, when the one fails or proves re- 
creant. 

Nor is it necessary, at this time, to say more of the 
antecedents of Catharine Traflford, than to indorse 
what in itself is so plainly evident — that she was no 
member or near connection of Ephraim Reed’s fam- 
ily, whatever relation she held as one of his house- 
hold ; and that, resident in Philadelphia until within 
a very late period preceding, she had at that time 
left the city and taken up her residence at Cedar 
Grove, — to what end, or if to any end, maybe better 
apparent in the future than the present. 


CHAPTER IV. 


A CLOAKED VISITOR IN BLACK. 

Night had fallen for some two or three hours, and 
the indications of the coming storm were growing 
more pronounced, in the hoarse rumbling of the 
wind over the chimney, creating additional draught 
in the great fire, and at times drawing wide whirls of 
sparks up its huge throat, with fierce cracklings and 
sudden bursts of flame, — the while the three, almost 
without word, held the positions in which they have 
been already shown, and followed those veritable 
occupations of idleness so proper for those housed 
from the threats and discomforts of the winter night. 

Anon, however, youth asserted itself, in one of its 
first privileges, that of restlessness. The rocking- 
chair was still, then fell back into the greater slope 
of abandonment, as Catharine Trafford rose from it, 
with a motion like that of one shaking off enforced 
restraint, and walked away to the nearest window, 
drawing back the white curtain and looking out on 
the night. As she so rose, her tall stature came 
fully into view ; and then, too, was first noticed the 
exquisite willowy grace of body and the springing 
ease of step, which combined to make her the rival 
of the lithe and petite in those very characteristics, 
while retaining the actual force of beauty, so to speak, 
only to be found in those of commanding figure. No 
strangers could the eyes of Hannah Reed have been, 


30 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


either to the figure or its movements ; and yet they, 
so seldom moving in any excitement, were lifted for 
the moment from their employment, turned, and fol- 
lowed her to the window, as if never tired of observ- 
ing that wealth of youth and grace, so warmly appeal- 
ing to age which has passed kindly beyond those 
possessions. And as she stood at the pane, her face 
close against it in the mere purposeless look out- 
ward, and a finger tapping the glass in the same idle- 
ness, even the very fire seemed to wish to retain its 
sight of her, having no power to bring answering 
hues out of the dense black of her gown, but falling 
lovingly on the clustered hair of chestnut and gold, 
and tinting it with the warmest rays of its own hold- 
ing. 

As she stood thus, there was a sound without, as 
of a falling clapboard ringing upon another, or the 
clang of gate shut with a certain suddenness. The 
careful Quaker looked up from his book, and said : 

“ The storm-wind increaseth, as I think. From the 
sound, I fear that Michael or Joshua may have left 
something without due fastening. Does thee know 
if they were about their duty at dusk, Hannah.^ ” 

“Yes, Ephraim, they were both here, and seemed 
to be duly at their work ; and I think that the men 
are careful and would not leave anything uncared 
for,” answered the Quakeress, with no pause in her 
knitting. 

“Then must the wind have loosened something, to 
possible damage ; or we are visited by prowlers of 
more danger than the wind ; I will even go out and 
see,” said Ephraim Reed. 

“ Not with thy bailed head and slippered feet, I 
trust,” answered the wife. “Truly thee had a bad 


A Cloaked Visitor in Black. 31 

catarrh, only the last week, Ephraim ; and it be- 
hooves thee to be careful.” 

“Nay,” answered the Quaker, “without exposing 
my head or my feet overmuch, I will even look out 
at the night and the grounds.” He rose to do so ; 
when the sound was yet more loudly repeated — this 
time evidently of a recognizable force and direction, 
— and Catharine Trafford said: 

“ Hear it again, friend Ephraim, and louder. That 
is nothing blown down, but the clapping of the gate 
at the lane. One of the men may merely have left 
the latch unloosened, and the wind is perhaps over- 
strong for the rope and pulley.” 

“Aye, it may be so, and that can wait for the morn- 
ing, good Catharine,” replied the Quaker, preparing 
to reseat himself and resume his book, when again 
startled by a different word from the window : 

“Ha!” 

“ What sees thee, Catharine } ” he asked, still stand- 
ing. 

“ Nothing ; but above the sound of the wind I 
hear the tread of feet on snow.” 

“ Then must we be beset, by the men of war from 
the camp, albeit they have thus far held away from 
us, to our much content,” commented the Quaker, 
with obvious trouble, but little fear, in his voice ; but 
Hannah Reed took up the word, with a reassurance 
as placid as herself. 

“Nay, Ephraim,” she said, “methinks they would 
scarce need this night of bitter cold and coming 
storm, did they desire to do us harm, — and that so 
they would come in the daylight, seeing that there 
could be none to hinder them, at any hour.” 

“ Humph, thee forgets. Hannah, that the fighting 


32 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


man, George Washington, is said to be very severe 
unto his soldiers, if they be known to maraud upon 
property ; and that only on fifth day, friend Isaac did 
tell us of the cruel taking of life of two soldiers for 
burning of fence-rails and carrying off of chickens, 
nigh to Phoenixville ; so that if they would seek to 
harm us, doubtless they would come in the night and 
even in storm, for better concealment.” 

“ In 7ny opinion,” interposed Catharine, “ if what 
friend Isaac told us be true, of the discipline at the 
camp, poor and naked and half-starving as they are, 
the soldiers would not be very likely to come at all, 
for fence-rails, or even more, whether by night or 
day, with such a doom hanging above them.” 

“Aye, thee is right, methinks, Catharine,” said 
Hannah. But the Quaker saw both sides of the ques- 
tion more clearly, as indeed many had cause to do, 
spite of all the efforts of the commander, before the 
coming of the spring. 

“Thee little knows, Hannah, or thee, Catharine,” 
he replied, “what men will do for food, when they, 
are hungry, and how the dreadful trade of war makes 
them careless of life — aye, even of their own — ” 

But this philosophical comment upon patriot hun-. 
ger, by one who neither intended to feel it himself 
fDr the cause, nor yet to allay it in others by any dan- 
gerous contribution, — was cut short by the voice of 
Catharine at the window. 

“ It was the sound of feet on snow, that I heard. 
Some one is coming up the path from the lane.” 

“ Some one — then there is one only ” 

“Only one, friend Ephraim, that I can see as' yet. 
It is a man, as I think — tall and cloaked, for I see 
the cloak blowing broad in the wind.” 


A Cloaked llsitor i?i Black. 


33 


“ Thee has keen eyes, and is very observant, Catha- 
rine,” said the Quaker, coming toward the window 
where the lady stood, but almost too late to catch 
through the dusk, even against the snowy back- 
" ground, the contour of the figure, now nearly at the 
piazza and in the next moment sounding foot upon 
it, with two or three sharp raps at the knocker fol- 
lowing. 

Undoubtedly all the three at that instant within 
the room were more or less excited, at a visit so un- 
expected, and so out of the ordinary habits of the 
place and the time. For, after nightfall, on the one 
side within the lines of an army, and on the other in 
the midst of a population known to be inimical to 
the cause of that army, men did not go out to pay 
evening calls even upon neighbors, except for some 
cause of moment. But if excited, each showed char- 
acter in the agitation. Hannah Reed may have knit- 
ted a trifle less regularly and a trifle more rapidly than 
half an hour before, but she did not lay down or sus- 
pend her work. Catharine Trafford remained at the 
window, and did not at first even turn toward the 
door to see the person about to enter. The face of 
Ephraim Reed may have paled a little, as it had full 
* warrant to do ; but he betrayed no sign of anxiety, 
and at the sound of the knocker went forward at 
once and undid the iron bolt that had been drawn at 
his last coming in at nightfall, throwing open the 
door so that the light from within could fall on the 
person on the piazza, and uttering the unchalleng- 
ing greeting of his sect ; 

“ Enter, friend.” 

A moment of stamping the snow from his foot- 
gear; and then, while Catharine had been casting 
2 * 


34 


The Spur -of Momnouth. 


another iglance without and observing that no other 
followed or was within sight, the invitation was ac- 
cepted, and a tall man, cloaked, and doffing cocked 
hat as he entered, stepped into the room. 

The -figure was tall — almost or quite six feet in 
height, well .rounded and athletic. The removed hat 
showed a face of something past middle age, nobly 
moulded, grave and firm-looking, with short side 
•whisker, and dark brown hair queued in the fashion 
of the time. He was plainly but respectably dressed 
in black, with cravat slightly ruffled ; the cocked hat 
without other than the mere black rosette serving as 
a cockade ; and even the rough buckled over-leg- 
gings above his boots, black like the rest of his garb, 
including the heavy horseman’s cloak which Catha- 
rine Trafford had seen blowing out in the wind. So 
far, all was clerical, and that appearance was further 
carried out by the apparent absence of all weapons 
— no common thing for the night-rider of that time ; 
and the only relief in color came from a pair of brown 
gloves which he was removing as he entered, from a 
heavy pendant watch-seal at fob, and from the silver 
sheen of his spurs, showing over stout riding-boots 
capable of defying the midwinter snow. 

“We do not know thee or the cause of thy visit, 
friend, but thee is welcome,” was the salutation of 
the Quaker householder, motioning to a seat, as the 
new-comer bowed apologetically as in the presence 
of ladies, sweeping at the same time a glance round 
the apartment, taking in every detail of consequence, 
and supposedly embracing all the personalities. 

“ I have to apologize,” was the answer, “ for a 
somewhat unceremonious coming. And pardon me 
if I do not sit, as I have no title to do so without giv- 


A Cloaked Visitor in Black. 


35 

ing my name and position, which I may only do to 
one within this house.” 

Not even the placid Quaker education of many 
years could prevent Hannah Reed, at that moment, 
feeling enough of surprise and curiosity, at this sig- 
nificant declaration, to drop a stitch in tjje mitten at 
her hand, and thereby mar the perfection of that 
winter-covering. Not even the steadiness of nerve 
of the lady at the window, prevented her feeling a 
start of anxiety dart through her frame, and turning 
full upon the new-comer the light of eyes that must 
have dazzled most men. And not even the hard 
schooling of sixty years could prevent the coming 
into the voice of Ephraim Reed, of something that 
would have been half anger and half indignation in 
one of the world’s people, as he said : 

“As thee pleases. Who is it thee wishes to see, 
then ? There are no others in this house, than those 
whom thee sees, and my servants.” 

“ Pardon once more,” replied the visitor. “ I am 
commissioned to inquire for one Mistress Catharine 
Traffbrd, whom,” with a bow of courtly grace, “ I am 
led to believe that I have the honor to see before 
me, and to ask of her the great favor of an audience 
without hearers.” 

“I am Catharine Trafford, sir, as you suppose!” 
And the lady stepped forward from the window, thus 
coming full into the light of fire and lamps somewhat 
suddenl)^ and presenting to the view of the new- 
comer a vision of queenly beauty not often vouch- 
safed to men upon missions of war or of state. But 
before she could say further, and certainly before 
the visitor, not a little blinded and dazzled by the 
brilliant apparition, could find word to reply, Ephraim 


36 The Spur of Monmouth. 

Reed spoke again, with a voice not too pleased or 
amiable : 

“This is Catharine Trafford, friend without a name, 
as thee supposed, and as she has herself informed 
thee. But my mind misdoubts me that thee has no 
right to hol4 any private interview with her, as a 
maiden lady, without good cause shown to some 
elder than herself.” 

Hannah Reed looked up from her knitting, her 
smooth face full of good-natured deprecation, not 
unmixed with trouble. The Quaker merely stood, 
with one hand on the back of the refused chair, his 
hard fea^'^fis set a little more than their habit, and 
waiti o a reply not too easy to give. But Catharine 
Tralford, in whose usually pale cheeks there had 
been flushing a trifle of the restrained blood, at this 
juncture cut the tangled knot, at once, with a decision 
that no one cared to gainsay. 

- “ Let me speak, friend Ephraim, if you please,” she 
said, “ and depend upon it that I am of years enough 
to understand my own dignity, should any one 
threaten it. This gentleman, whose name and sta- 
tion we do not know, desires a private interview 
with me. Strange as the request is, there may be 
urgent reasons for making it; and I should be in- 
deed a coward if I allowed any strict propriety to 
stand in the way of what may be a duty of some con- 
sequence. I will see him alone, if you will make it 
possible for me to do so.” 

Another bow, this time of thanks and gratification, 
was the reply of the visitor ; while Hannah Reed, con- 
' quered but not convinced, shook her head in doubt, 
and her husband, as evidently overcome against his 
will, stood silent. The lady went on : 


/ Chdked Visitor in Black. 


37 


“ Do me the favor, good friends, to go into the 
other apartment, for the few minutes until I call you 
to return. Did courtesy to a stranger not forbid, I 
should ask him to accompany me thither, where, for- 
tunately, the fire of our late supper has made the air 
quite as comfortable as here. Will ^ou grant me 
this privilege, and trust me to tell you all that should 
be told, afterward.^” 

The reply of the Quakeress was to rise from her 
chair, with her knitting still in hand, as if that was 
necessarily still to be carried on in whatever room 
she might enter. That’of the Quaker was to say : 

“Thee will do as thee pleases, Cathtt.ire, as thee 
has always been in the habit of doing, where, r thee 
has been, I think. Only remember that this is not 
quite seemly, and that if thee should afterward be 
sorry for forsaking the advice of thy elders, thee has 
only thyself to blame.” 

So saying, Ephraim Reed and his wife passed with- 
out another word into the adjoining apartment — 
really the kitchen of the house, and, as Catharine 
had said, quite as well warmed as the other, through 
the great fire left from the recent supper prepara- 
tion. Two of the servants, there finding their even- 
ing comfort, fell back a little from the fire as the 
master and mistress made their unexpected entrance ; 
and there Ephraim Reed resumed the book which 
he had carried with him, by a better light than he 
h^d before enjoyed, in the large home-made candles 
of tallow and bayberry supplying that want in domes- 
tic service; and there Hannah Reed placidly recom- 
menced her knitting, with a steadiness indicating 
that many stitches had been lost in the interruption 
and removal, and that life was not long enough for 


38 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


many extended defaults in that serious direction. 
There was only the thickness of a single unpaneled 
door between the room where they sat and the one 
in which they had left their guest and the uncommu- 
nicative visitor ; but the wind roared over the chim- 
neys, and the* storm had commenced pattering on 
the pane, and they could have heard nothing of what 
was spoken within, except under the basest attempts 
at espial, which they were little likely to make, under 
whatever pressure of anxiety, 
i. 


CHAPTER V. 


GEORGE VERNON, CHAPLAIN AND SECRETARY. 

“Only remember that this is not quite seemly, and 
that if thee should afterward be sorry for forsaking 
the advice of thy elders, thee has only thyself to 
blame.” Such had been the last words uttered in 
Catharine Tralford's hearing, after the announce- 
ment of her determination to accord a private intei^ 
view to the stranger; and it may well be that the 
warning, though she disregarded it in action, rang 
through her mind with even more force after the lips 
of the Quaker had ceased uttering it, than when he 
was in the act of speaking. Few of the great crises 
of our lives come to us without more or less of notifi- 
cation ; though it often happens, and perhaps in the 
majority of cases, that we fail to recognize what are 
the omens of the spoken word or the unexpected 
occurrence, and so go on to our doom, pleasant or 
painful, quite as uninstructed as if no warning had 
ever been given. That this hour would later be 
looked back to, with the knowledge that it had been 
the turning-point of a life — this was almost certain, 
though the brain of the thinker was as yet too dazed 
to understand precisely how and why: would it be 
the foundation of a life-long regret, of a great and 
enduring happiness, of both commingled.^ Who 
could say.^ Nay, who can even decide, to-day, all 
the circumstances known or closely guessed, how 
hangs the balance ? 


40 


T/ie Spu^ of ATorwioiith. 


The door had closed on them — they were alone 
together. No word was spoken, for more than a 
moment, under what influence of restraint neither 
could possibly have told, Then Catharine, with an 
eflbrt, motioned the visitor to take the chair so lately 
vacated by the Quakeress, and as he obeyed the ges- 
ture with a bow of acknowledgment, said, without 
heeding his responsive invitation to herself: 

“ I have obeyed your wish, sir: we are quite alone, 
with no one in hearing. Who are you ? — and what 
is it that you wish, in such confidence, of Catharine 
Trafibrd } ” 

“You are positive, madame, that we are quite be- 
yond the hearing of any others ? ” was the reply, 
with a close and scrutinizing glance around the 
room. 

“ I am certain." 

“ I am thus particular," he said, “because the com- 
munications that I am about to make to you, mad- 
ame, and to receive from you, demand the most in- 
violable secrecy, quite as much on your account as 
my own.” 

“So much I understand, sir, from what you have 
already said," she replied, taking the chair before re- 
fused. “ Pray answer my question as satisfactorily 
as possible.” 

She spoke with a certain impatience, and with a 
certain hauteur as well, quite becoming her, and by 
no means unmarked by her companion. 

“ I know your name, inadame, so that it is only fit- 
ting you should know mine. Do not start, or let any 
exclamation of surprise betray you, when I say that I 
am an officer in the Continental Army." 

She did start ; made half a motion to rise from her 


George Ver7to77, Chaplabi a7id Secretary. 41 

chair, at this announcement — then sank back into 
it and seemed to bite her full red lips, with the reply : 

“ If you are an officer in the Continental Army, 
what reason have you to suppose that you have any 
interest in common with me? You seem to have 
some knowledge of my personality, as well as of my 
name. Am I to understand that you are really alone, 
as you have come into this house, — or that you have 
force at hand, and intend to make me a prisoner and 
take me to the camp, as an emissary and possibly a 
spy of Sir William Howe ? ” 

“ With that clear head and those quick powers of 
reasoning, madame," responded the officer, “ you 
might indeed be a dangerous emissary of Sir William, 
or of any other interest which you consented to 
serve.’' A smile for one moment flitted over the 
grave, handsome face ; but it instantly passed away 
as he continued. “ But let us not misunderstand 
each other, too long or too far. I know of such a 
suspicion, and how much it is worth in reality. No, 
madame, I am alone, as to any hostile force, as you 
will readily believe after a little time. Will you per- 
mit me to conclude the introduction of myself which 
I commenced, and to say that 1 am both a lay and a 
clerical officer of the army, called on the muster-rolls 
Colonel George Vernon, chaplain as well as confi- 
dential secretary to the commander-in-chief? ” 

Catharine Traffbrd bowed, from her chair, in ac- 
knowledgment of the completed introduction ; but 
she only said : 

“And even then, sir, and with so much under- 
stood — ” 

“Even then, madame, you wish to repeat the in- 
quiry ; What reason have I to suppose that there can 


42 


The Spur of Mofwiouth. 


be any interest in common, between yourself and the 
Continental officer ? ” 

“ Quite so,” was the significant response, with the 
brown eyes, now almost black, meeting those of her 
interlocutor very searchingly and with what must be 
designated as a certain bold timidity. 

“Ambassadors, however humble, should be care- 
ful not to present themselves without their creden- 
tials,” said Colonel Vernon, again slightly smiling, 
as he marked the full determination of the lady to 
keep him at arm's length, so to say. He drew from 
his pocket a bit of crumpled paper, not too cleanly, 
and somewhat stained with damp and handling, and 
gave it to Catharine, with an apology for its condi- 
tion. She took, with surprise and interest equally 
growing in her face — opened and read this strange 
missive, which even within the last twenty years has 
been in the possession of one of the old Revolution- 
ary families,' and may yet remain in the same cus- 
tody. 

From the Great Eastern Woods, ) 
First Moon of Snow, 1777-8. f 

To the Bending Willow, in the West: 

The stranger who comes to the wigwam of the Straight Pine, 
speaks with a single tongue. The Bending Willow may give ear 
to his words. What she says to him will be buried deeper than 
under the snows of > many winters. If he gives a name that is 
green, the Bending Willow will speak. It will be well for the 
tribe, if she makes him wise. He is the friend of a great chief. 

John -}- Nekaneshwa, of the Delawares. 

Colonel George Vernon, as he had named himself, 
sat silent, as she read and re-read, his regard never 
for an instant leaving the beautiful face, and his 
usually firm lips parted with more anxiety than he 


George Vernon^ Chaplain and Sea'etafy. 43 

himself knew, as to the effect to be produced by the 
missive, so important in its bearing, though so brief, 
possibly on the lives and fortunes of millions. 

For quite a moment, after Catharine Trafford had 
ceased reading, she also sat silent, while probably 
there had never been a closer regard bent on the 
face before her, than that which came from the soft 
brown eyes, closely veiled under their Jong lashes, 
yet looking through them into the countenance 'she 
saw — nay into the very soul beneath. Then, her 
answer was a very brief but a thoroughly satisfactory 
one. She put the soiled and crumpled paper to her 
lips, before she laid it down, then stretched her 
shapely white hand across the little table and put it 
into that of her visitor, as a child might have done, 
with the somewhat strange words : 

“ Forgive me ! ” 

“ Forgive you, madame ? For what, may I ask ? ” 
was the surprised and very natural reply. 

“For receiving you with suspicion — for not un- 
derstanding, sooner, that you were indeed a friend, 
and one to be trusted entirely.” 

“You acted, madame, only the part of prudence : 
and of that certainly I can make no complaint.” 

Catharine Trafford once more looked at him for 
quite a moment before she again replied : 

“ Yes, it was prudence, I suppose. Yet who knows 
that it may not have been pride — my besetting sin, 
I think. You might have found cause to distrust 
me, even already, and then — . See how frank I am, 
and let the one excess atone for the other.” 

The white hand still lay partially across the table, 
presenting the strongest of contrasts against its dark 
surface, and its matchless outlines thus betrayed as 


44 


The Spur of A/oumoufh. 


they might not otherwise have been under any one 
of a thousand other conditions. It had been stretched 
out in apology and as a token of assured amity : pos- 
sibly in the mind of the gazer there arose the ques- 
tion whether, once relinquished, there did not exist 
some obligation to take it again, in reassurance. 
Whatever the incitement, and whether he could or 
could not have explained the moving force, even to 
himself, Colonel George Vernon took it once more 
in his own, unresisted, and then, as if moved by a 
necessity or an impulse stronger than his own will, 
raised it slowly, courteously, feeling, as he did so, one 
tremor of the frame behind it, indicating a moment- 
ary frightened impulse to snatch it away, followed by 
as declared a submission of nerves and sinews, leav- 
ing it lying like a warm snowllake at his lips. 

In the next moment, he was upon his feet, with 
the manly face flushed, and those lips so honored set 
even more closely than was their wont. Catharine 
Trafford, too, was standing; but if a blush burned 
beneath the clear wax of her cheeks, the flush was 
far less perceptible. There may have been surprise 
upon her face : there was certainly no anger. In the 
next moment there was even a slight smile breaking 
over the speaking countenance, as she laid her finger 
on the paper upon the table, with a gesture indicat- 
ing that that required the next consideration,, and 
half turned her head toward the door between the 
two apartments, as if to convey a reminder that there 
should be a close to this interview. On the instant, 
whatever he might momentarily have been, he was 
again Colonel George Vernon, chaplain and secre- 
tary to the commander-in-chief, intent on the busi- 
ness of his station. 


George Venio/i, Chaplam and Secretary. 45 

“You do me the honor, madame,” he spoke, “to 
intimate to me that that letter from John — ” 

“ From Nekaneshwa, of the Delawares,” she inter- 
rupted, as if to hinder a mistaken word, dangerous to 
be spoken to the very walls. 

“From Nekaneshwa, certainly, madame: that that 
letter entitles me to your full confidence.” 

“My full and entire confidence. Colonel Vernon, 
certainly. Pray tell me how I can show it.” 

The visitor leaned across the table and put his lips 
very close to the pink ear beneath the golden-brown 
hair, as he answered, in a voice that could scarcely 
have been heard even by a listener at the door : 

“ I have to ask from you, in the interest of the 
commander-in-chief, as full particulars as may be in 
your possession, of the conspiracy now in progress 
to discredit him with Congress and remove him from 
command — of the names of those who take the most 
prominent part in it, and the motives which you 
understand to govern them.” 

There was silence, again, for quite a moment after 
he spoke. Catharine Trafford had started, percepti- 
bly, as some of the words implicating her in that 
dangerous knowledge fell upon her ear: then she 
turned away abruptly, put her hand to her drooped 
head, paced nearly the whole length of the room and 
returned, before she answered: 

“ With that letter to guide me, and with — but stay, 
that should be enough : with that letter to guide me, 
nay to command me. Colonel Vernon, I can make 
but one answer, to a demand which I can not but feel 
to be extraordinary. You are entitled to any knowl- 
edge in my possession, which may be more or less 
important than you believe ; and it is yours.” 


46 


The Spur of Moyimouth. 


“My country — my — the commander-in-chief as 
well as myself, shall thank you, inadame," he replied, 
with all the distant and courtly dignity of his coming 
fully resumed. “Events press, and every day seems 
of fatal importance. And yet, I have no right to 
occupy more of your time, and perhaps expose you 
to misjudgment, to-night. When may I hope for per- 
mission to visit you again, for the fulfillment of your 
promise } ” 

“ He would not forgive me — nay, I would not for- 
give myself, if I delayed ; and yet I must have time 
— time to think,” was the response. “Not to-mor- 
row night — no: let it be the evening of the second 
day from the present; and then depend upon my 
saying all that it may become me to say.” 

“Two days hence — the night of the 15th — so,” 
he said. “At that time, if God spare us both, expect 
me. And now, once more a thousand thanks for all 
courtesy, and a thousand apologies for — ” 

“For nothing. Colonel Vernon! See!” And as 
she spoke she took the hand of her visitor, just ex- 
tended to her grasp for the due good-night, and 
raised it to her own lips ! So graceful and so 
womanly this condonation of a possible offense, and 
yet so bewildering. The Continental officer could 
scarcely have told, afterward, how he spoke his last 
word of farewell and left the house, joining a wait- 
ing orderly and mounting his horse in the shelter 
of the outbuildings, for the brief ride through the 
now whirling and dashing winter storm, back to the 
camp at Valley Forge. Nor possibly could Catharine 
Trafford have been much clearer as to that event, 
the reaction of suppressed excitement upon her, the 
waxen cheeks at last aflame, and her whole system 


George Vernon^ Chaplain and Secretary. 47 

shaken with an emotion which at once bowed her 
with shame and filled her with pride beyond expres- 
sion, as half an hour later she disrobed that regal 
form and unbound that wealth of golden-brown hair 
in her own chamber, the storm raging without and 
the wind roaring wildly over chimney and around 
gable, but all unheard in the wilder tumult of her 
long-dormant and late-awakened heart. 

“ Have I lived for this ? ” she half muttered, as she 
threw away the long, bright masses from her brow, 
before again and anew confining them. “ Oh shame ! 
— oh what else than shame that I dare not think ! — 
that I, who have fought so long and conquered so 
long, should now be measuring days and counting 
hours like a school-girl ! Out upon it ! Oh, that I 
were anywhere else than here ! — oh, that I could be 
any one else than myself! " 


CHAPTER VI. 


RICHARD FOY AND RUNNING BRIER. 

Fortunately imagination can more easily descend 
the frost-bound Schuylkill, cross the icy Delaware, 
and thread the tangled woods and difficult roads 
lying between that river and the more cultivated 
portions of Central Jersey, thirty or forty miles dis- 
tant from it, than it would have been found practic- 
able for any living man to do, in the middle of that 
severe January of 1778. And it is necessary, leaving 
for the briefest of periods the important neighbor- 
hood of Valley Forge, to glance at places and per- 
sons in the new locality, destined to be brought 
into close connection with events then occurring at 
and around the headquarters of the patriot army. 

Two miles northward from Monmouth Court House 
(now Freehold, and then occasionally called by that 
name, though nearly always by the former, after the 
manner which still obtains in many of the counties 
of Virginia), stood a log-built but very comfortable 
dwelling, of rather large extent on the ground, and 
showing one of the peculiarities of the time in a 
smaller and lower addition being gabled onto the 
higher, the former devoted to the rougher purposes 
of living, and the latter to those of actual abode. 
It was surrounded by some acres of cleared land, 
thrifty and reasonably well kept, though the stumps 
of the former woodland had been by no means 


Richard Foy and Ricnning Brier. 


49 


cleared away, and though the fences were of. the 
rudest material and construction. The house had 
no porch — only a step in its place; and there was 
no garden. But that some one there resident loved 
flowers in however humble a way, was made evident 
by a variety of rough cords leading up from the 
ground on either side of the step, above the door 
over which they were hung with flowering creepers 
in the season, and even now in midwinter had some of 
the dry stalks of the perished parasite tangled among 
them. There were some small out-buildings at a lit- 
tle distance, between which and the house the trod- 
den snow showed occasional passage ; in all other 
directions, except that of the wood-pile heaped with 
gnarled stumps and roughly chopped firewood, and 
that of the primitive water-supply at the brook — 
in all other directions the snow lay smooth and un- 
broken, showing the very dead of winter and the 
time when not even the most industrious hand could 
add to agricultural prospects by battling with the ele- 
ments. That there was life within, however, seemed 
obvious ; for from the rough plastered chimney the 
clear blue smoke of wood fires was pouring freely. 
Before the house, though the ground was almost 
level, gradually a slope went down to the hedged 
brook at a few rods’ distance ; while behind it, a 
correspondent rise went up to the edge of a belt of 
noble timber, now naked and shivering in the winter 
air, but rhajestic even in that aspect, and stretching 
away in one direction to the unbroken forest lying 
northward. 

At a certain hour of the afternoon of the day un- 
der notice, however, something more than the smoke 
suddenly made manifest the presence of humanity, 
3 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


and of its exact opposite, at the door-step of this 
house standing thus quietly in the winter snow. A 
man of some fifty years of age, stout-figured, heavy- 
browed, and somewhat hard-faced, dressed in dark 
winter homespun, but bareheaded, opened the door 
with some violence, and the moment after appeared 
on the threshold, dragging after him a poor little 
thinly clothed girl of ten, with long flying hair and 
wild eyes, whom he only paused from belaboring to 
loosen the door, immediately resuming his assaults 
upon the shrinking little figure, with harsh words 
blended with blows, the violence culminating in his 
throwing her off the steps, prostrate in the snow, 
where she lay, frightened if not stunned into com- 
parative silence. 

“ Lie there and cool, you abominable little slut ! ” 
was the exclamation with which he crowned this act 
of supreme cruelty. “ Disobey me again, will you ! 
Next time, I shall break every bone in your carcass, 
and you will cool enough without any snow.” 

Apparently regardless whether the little figure 
would ever again move or not, the man turned on 
the step, to re-enter the house and shut the door ; 
when out of it came a thin woman, some fifteen 
years younger than the male tyrant, and showing at 
a glance traces of former beauty now almost com- 
pletely destroyed by sorrow or suffering. She was 
coarsely though not uncomfortably clothed, in some 
dark stuff; and her head, bare like that of the other, 
showed that already, at little more than five-and- 
thirty years of age, there were great silver streaks 
in her hair, like those made by pinching want or 
long sickness. She was wringing her hands, in a 
sort of pitiful, helpless way, as she stood in the open 


Richard Roy and Ruftnmg Brier. 5 1 

door; and there was almost a sob in her voice as she 
said ; 

“Oh Richard, how can you be so hard with her? 
I heard the blows on her poor back, all the way from 
the kitchen.” 

“ Hold your tongue, woman ! ” was the rough re- 
ply ; while the child, as if daring to rise, now that 
there was some one else than her tormentor within 
sight, rather stumbled than rose out of the snow, 
and stood sobbing with those long sobs which tell 
•of a childish effort to restrain an emotion that must 
be controlled while the suppression is racking the 
very foundations of the being, 

“ Richard Foy, you will kill that poor child, some 
day — I am sure that you will ! ” said the woman, her 
hands at last unclasped, in an evident intention to go 
out into the snow and in some way comfort and shel- 
ter the poor waif there* remaining. But her inten- 
tion was frustrated, by a motion of the head of the 
man whom she had called Richard Foy, which per- 
emptorily ordered her back into the house, — and by 
words which followed, cruel and brutal enough to 
have been veritable blows'falling upon the shoulders 
of what now appeared to be mother and child. 

“You touch her, if you think best, when I’ve been 
dealing with her, old woman ! ” he rather sneered and 
snarled than spoke. “Thought I had told you what 
that would come to, often enough, let alone giving 
you a taste of the same, as I’ll do again if you go to 
meddling with my doings ! Kill her? — and what if I 
do? Isn’t she mine? — mine? — MINE, you beauty! 
Tell me that — isn’t she mine? And if she’s mine, 
may I not do what I like with her, whether I kill 
her like a woodchuck, or skin her like a ’possum?” 


52 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“ Oh, Richard ! Richard ! ” was all the reply that 
the poor woman could make, the hands again clasped 
together and wringing themselves, while the poor 
child, with limbs shaking in the cold of the snow, 
and great eyes staring in wondering fear, remained 
without daring either to speak or to make any mo- 
tion for re-entering. A moment, and then the name 
was repeated, with an addition telling so much of 
continuous agony: “ Richard, God forgive you ! ” 

“ Aye ! ” he hurled at her, in reply. “ God forgive 
me, of course ! T am the one who has need of for- 
giveness, am I, psalm-singer? — no, psalm-whim- 
perer, for )^ou know better than to do much of that 
sort of thing around me! Now, see here — if I let 
that brat come into the house again — I don’t say that 
I will, but if I do, will you take care that she minds 
me: that I don’t catch any more of them things^in 
her hands, any more at all? Yes or no, old woman, 
and mind what you’re saying, for I’ll be after you ! ” 

“Yes, Richard; Twill try to have her do as you 
order — 1 will indeed, hard as it is upon her, and she 
getting to be quite a girl, not to be allowed to look 
into a book, and so growing up as ignorant and as 
wild as any of the savages. It is hard, Richard, but 
I will try, if you say that it must be so.” 

“ I say so — look out that I do not need to say it 
again ! Now take her in, if you think that she is 
cooled off enough ! ” 

Sarah Foy hastened to obey, her heart the while 
giving a great bound of oppressed wretchedness that 
well answered to the nigh bursting of that of poor lit- 
tle Esther, who. thus permitted, crept up to her where 
she stood on the step, and buried her frightened face 
and half-frozen arms in the folds of her mother’s 


Richard Foy and Running Brier. 53 

gown, as if she could not wait even for the shelter of 
the house before seeking that haven of refuge. The 
arms of the mother closed tremblingly and yet oh, 
how fondly around the thin shivering figure ; and for 
the instant her face was turned upward in the wintry 
air: perhaps she may have been looking, through 
the frosty ether, for a Father in Heaven for the little 
one who had so truly and so sadly none on earth. 
Then she turned to the half-open door, and prepared 
to take in the child, yet with her gown wrapped 
around her face and arms in the same attitude of 
protection. 

The door had not yet closed upon mother and 
child, when there was a crunch in the snow at the 
corner of the house — that farthest removed from 
the outhouses and so untrodden in daily avocations 

— then a closer and heavier sound of the same char- 
acter — and before them* stood a figure the sudden- 
ness of whose corning would not have been the least 
of his claims to awesome regard, had those who saw 
him then looked for the first time on his remarkable 
face and bearing. 

Any observer, looking for that first time at the 
countenance of Nekaneshwa, John of the Delawares, 
or Indian John, as he was alternately called by one 
or another class who had occasion to speak of him 

— would have believed that there was' in his veins 
some cross of blood much darker than that of the 
pure aboriginal tribe with which he held influential 
connection — so dusky was the copper-color of his 
skin, and so entirely free was the whole conforma- 
tion of his face from any of those characteristics 
which seem to assimilate the red man of America 
with a well-known Oriental nation, through the 


54 


The Spur of Mon77iotith. 


eagle beak, the high cheek-bones, and the undue 
voluptuous fullness of the mouth as compared with 
other portions of the physiognomy. Indeed, in the 
section where he was so well known and in a sihgu- 
lar way so influential, extending over much of Mon- 
mouth and Middlesex, and even beyond, — there 
were many who believed that some negro admixture 
had taken place in his line, later or earlier, leading 
to that glossy dark bronze of cheek and brow, and 
that eye equally dark and soft which looked forth 
from beneath his heavy brows, with too much of 
hair, again, for the aborigine, and matched by an un- 
deniable wave in the hair of the head, not common 
with any known type of the Northern Indians. This 
fancy of Ethiopian blood, however, was by no means 
carried out by the cut of the features, which was 
clear and almost classic, with the effect of a contour 
that must have been in youth very handsome. Hair 
and complexion both told of fifty-five to sixty years, 
though there was no stoop in the very tall and pow- 
erful form, with markedly large hands and shoulders 
of great breadth and squareness. 

Not much of ,the form of Indian John, however, 
could be seen at the moment when he came into the 
presence of Richard Foy, his wife, and poor little 
Esther. For, below, only leggings of deer-hide, moc- 
casins of similar material, and the beaded edge of a 
hunting-shirt could be seen, a rough blue woolen 
blanket being drawn close around his shoulders with 
one hand and gathered at the breast, while a strange 
incongruity with the color of the face and with the 
other accoutrements was shown in the wearing of a 
cocked hat with tarnish-ed silver at the borders, as if 
even the traditions of the Indian race and character 


Richard Foy a 7 id Rumiing Brier, 55 

were not quite sufficient to warrant the keeping of 
the head virtually bare, in the dead of winter. The 
Indian -carried no visible arms, other than a toma- 
hawk, literally half-ax, worn in the belt of his hunt- 
ing-shirt, and showing when he for a moment drop- 
ped the folds of his blanket ; and that he was not 
on what is now designated as the “ war-path,” was 
equally evidenced in the absence of any paint what- 
ever from his face, and in the fact that he held by 
the one unoccupied hand, and carried over his left 
shoulder, a long and bulky bundle or fagot of oaken 
splints, of the size and consistency employed in bas- 
ket-making in all countries where the bamboo or the 
osier-willow is not plentiful enough to do away with 
the necessity of that manufacture. 


CHAPTER VII. 


INDIAN JOHN AND HIS WARNING. 

It is not to be supposed that one-twentieth the 
time necessary for this description, passed in silence 
and inaction, after the coming of Indian John into 
the presence of the Foy family, and his halting in the 
snow before the door-step. Indeed, he had not well 
stopped when an excla^nation usual to the Lenni- 
Lenape as well as all the other Indian tribes, broke 
from him, as’ he took in the whole situation at a 
glance of those keen dark eyes. It was not quite the 
traditional Indian grunt, and yet it was more than a 
mere exclamation, that expressive — ■ 

“ Humph ! ” 

^ « Richard Foy may not have been pleased with the 
coming of the Indian : he certainly was not with 
the glance which fell upon him and those whom he 
had so emphatically declared to be /izs ; for there 
was decided impatience in his short greeting — the 
first part of it, so differently uttered, an echo of the 
Indian’s : 

“Humph! You here? AVell, John, what do you, 
want ? ” 

There was Indian reticence and gravity in the 
pause of Indian John before he spoke, and the slow- 
ness of his utterance when he did so — each word 
seeming to fall with the force of a pebble-stone, and 
to be cut off from the remainder with hard, clear 


Indian yohn arid his Warning, ‘ 57 

decision, as one might chop iron pellets from the end 
of a bar. Sarah Foy, standing in the doorway, with 
poor little Esther still sheltered in her gown, looked 
at him with a sort of scared and wondering interest, 
as she had done many times before — an interest so 
strange that she scarcely knew of its existence, much 
less found power to analyze it ; an interest so power- 
ful that it absorbed her, and prevented her noticing 
the fact of the child withdrawing her head from con- 
cealment the moment the Indian spoke, and seeming 
to be more reassured in his presence than she had 
been before his coming. 

, “What does Indian John want?” he said, in that 
slbw and impressive utterance, after an instant ‘of 
pause. “ Indian John wants nothing of pale-face 
Foy. No meat, for his rifle kills far and sure; no 
whisky, for he does not kill himself with the fire- 
water of the pale-faces, like so many of the braves of 
his tribe. But Indian John wants something, still, 
and he must have it : the pale-face Foy will be a wise 
man to listen, and do what he wishes.” 

Sarah Foy stood spell-bound, the fascination grow- 
ing upon her. The child withdrew herself quite from 
the sheltering gown, and stood with the wild eyes 
and the large mouth both open, but in no fear — 
rather the opposite: a something which might have 
led her, had she dared, to leave the thin hand hold- 
ing her with all the pained affection of a mother, and 
fly to be wrapped in the rough blanket of the abo- 
rigine. Richard Foy's dark face paled a little ; but 
he was a bold man, and he showed no tremor of 
voice as he answered : 

“ What? You want nothing, and yet you threaten 

3# 


The Spur of Monmotith, 


5S 

me, Indian? Let me know what is it that you want, 
and be quick and be olf.” 

“ Indian John, like all his people, comes when he 
pleases and goes when he pleases,” was the reply, 
the tall figure drawn up with a dignity which took 
away from any appearance of servile labor which 
might have been conveyed by the fagot on his 
shoulder. “ The pale-face Foy has a bitter tongue. 
It may sting him like the fang of the adder, if he is 
not careful. The Indian does not threaten: he only 
warns, like the rattlesnake that is his totem. The 
pale-face will do well to listen and heed. Last night 
the Great Spirit came to Indian John in a dream, and 
he gave him work to do. He will do it. The Great 
Spirit told Indian John that the pale-face Foy had a 
hard hand as well as a bitter tongue : that he beat 
his squaw and the girl papoose whom Indian John 
has named Running Brier.” 

“ What is that to you ? ” spoke Richard Foy, dog- 
gedly. “ Indian, if you do not wish to be hunted out 
of these woods, you had best get away while the 
play is good, and mind your own business. Besides, 
if the Great Spirit said that I beat my squaw, then 
the Great Spirit lied — that is all.” 

“The Great Spirit does not lie: the crooked ear 
may not catch his words aright,” the Indian pro- 
ceeded. “ But the ear was straight that heard the 
warning of the Great Spirit for the poor papoose. 
The pale-face Foy has been beating her to-day. In- 
dian John heard her cry, but a few minutes ago — 
her cry of pain. She has been lying there in the 
snow,” and he pointed to the spot so lately and so 
shamefully occupied, “where pale-face Foy threw 
the Running Brier in his rage. The Running Brier 


Indian John and his I Faming. 


59 


is not wicked — she is good. The pale-face Foy beat 
her because she was trying to grow wise from one of 
the white leaves with the strange marks, of the pale- 
faces.” 

“Curse you! — you have been playing the spy: 
you have been looking into my windows, again ! ” 
broke out Foy, while the .woman’s pale face was 
drawn with wonder, and that of the child with some 
feeling much more difficult to decipher. The man’s 
own face was a study of rage at that moment, and 
his hand clutched so nervously that personal vio- 
lence might not have been far beyond his thought. 

“No, Indian John has not been spying — he has 
only been setting a trap, like that he sets for foxes 
and rabbits, and pale-face Foy has fallen into it — 
that is all,” the Indian answered, calmly, and with a 
smile breaking over his dusky cheek: “see — the 
Great Spirit did not lie : the Running Brier, the pa- 
poose of the pale-face — ” 

“You lie, curse you! — if the Great Spirit does 
not ! ” hurled out the enraged man, interrupting. 

“The papoose has been beaten for trying to study 
the speaking leaves of the pale-face,” the Indian 
calmly went on, “and the Great Spirit will not have 
it so, any longer. He has told Indian John to stop 
the beating of Running Brier. Indian John will obey 
the voice. The pale-face Foy will be wise to take 
heed. These lands were the hunting-grounds of the 
Delawares. No one has bought them and paid wam- 
pum to the Delawares for them. While Indian John 
wills, the pale-face may live here at peace, and the 
braves will remain at the north and the west, in the 
mountains of their Great River. But when he calls, 
they come, and the wigwams will blaze. He will 


6o 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


never ca^l, to burn the wigwams of the good ; but he 
will obey the Great Spirit and leave no place for the 
squaw-men with white livers, who beat the papooses 
as if they were dogs, and throw them out into the 
snow like the entrails of game." 

“ Curse you, Indian nigger ! — I will do what I like, 
with my own ! ” broke out Foy, choking with a rage 
that was seriously compounded with fear, and his face 
more whitened with the contending emotions than it 
had been at any one time for years preceding. “ You 
threaten, at last, do you, all nigger, as I believe you 
are ! Do your worst, and see who comes out best ! 
I will have you swept away like so many dead leaves 
— every red nigger of you, when the troops come; 
and if you are not a fool, you will hang yourself with 
one of your own basket-strips, so as to be out of the 
way before the time comes for stringing you up with 
another sort of .rope." 

Bold words — such as have not infrequently been 
uttered by those who were moved by irresistible im- 
pulse, without quite being sure whether they meant 
them or no, or whether they were the wisest of enun- 
ciations ! Bold words, to a recognized leader of the 
Lenni-Lenape, at that day when the lodges of that 
powerful tribe were yet to be found at no great dis- 
tance from each other, in the mountains of the Dela- 
ware, and within one night’s march of the very spot 
where they were spoken ! Bold words, at a time 
when the flames of war were abroad over the whole 
land, flickering here and waning there, but liable to 
burst forth anew at any moment and in any quarter, 
the one side and the other being alternately the in- 
cendiaries, and no man able to tell for how many 
days or even hours a given section would remain in 


Indian y'ohit and his I Plant in^. 6i 

the powef of the faction which he favored or the op- 
posite power which he feared and hated. But Rich- 
ard Foy — as those who knew him well remembered 
in after years — was a bold man in his way, whatever 
else and worse he may have been ; and it is possible 
that, an Englishman of late immigration and a Tory 
of the most pronounced sentiments, he may have 
held, or fancied that he held, such knowledge of the 
plans and purposes of Sir William Howe, as to make 
him confident that at no distant day in the early 
spring he could ride over Monmouth with a gallant 
array of dragoons bearing him company, and virtually 
sweep away from the face of the land any whom he 
held to be dangerous to the royal cause or to him- 
self! 

Bold words, whatever of fear, as already said, may 
have been compounded in the feeling of rage giving 
them utterance, and however likely the speaker 
might have been, after alf, to pay a certain heed to 
the warning received, until his time of full power 
should come. But whether bold or the reverse, they 
seemed to produce upon the Indian not even the 
effect of exciting him to anger, though the two dead- 
liest words of insult of the time had been combined 
in the epithet “Indian nigger!” — and though the 
counter-warning of his intentions toward all who 
had chanced to displease him, might have been held 
likely to create at least the rage of antagonism in 
any breast not impervious to hostile feeling. He 
merely replied, in the same measured and weighty 
words, with the same figurative and not always intel- 
ligible idiom of his race : 

“ Indian John has said, as the Great Spirit has said 
to Indian John. If the cry of the Running Brier 


62 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


comes to the ears of Indian John any more — even 
once — by night or by day — through his ears, or in 
the voice which the Great Spirit, who is always true, 
sends to him in dreams, — then he will do as he has 
said, for the braves of his race never speak with a 
double tongue. The lire will lick up the logs of Foy’s 
wigwam — his scalp will hang at the belt of some 
brave whose girdle is not yet full — his squaw and 
his papoose will go into the lodge of the Delawares. 
If pale-face Foy is wise and heeds, it shall be well, 
and there will be peace between him and my people. 
Indian John has said: the pale-face has heard. Let 
him be wise. Indian John will go to his lodge and 
make baskets for the potatoes of the pale-faces.” 

Without waiting for reply, the Delaware turned 
away, with the same stately dignity w'hich he had 
shown throughout ; and the next moment the snow 
was again crunching beneath his broad moccasins, 
and he disappeared round the same corner of the 
house from which he had emerged. As he moved 
away, the spell which had so long held mother and 
child seemed to be broken, and they vanished into 
the house, the child again clinging close and half- 
hidden in Sarah Foy’s gown, and all the fear which 
had been temporarily dispelled, once more returned 
in all its terrible force. As for Richard Foy — though 
he had been so long standing in the keen wintry air 
that he might have found good excuse for also en- 
tering within at the earliest moment, he remained 
yet for a little on the same spot, his hard face darker 
and harder even than it had been when working his 
evil will upon poor little Esther, and such a tide of 
rage surging through his soul as can not be a pleas- 
ant visitant to any who love their kind in the world 


Indian yo/m and his Warning. 63 

and hope for a hereafter. And he did not take his 
way into shelter, at last, until he had apparently 
solved the problem of hate which consorted with 
the rage, and vented it, though in silence, by shak- 
ing his clenched fist toward the direction which he 
knew the Indian to have taken, with an expression 
of concentrated malice deadly enough to have killed 
the object of his regard, even as he walked. 

Then the threatened threatener passed into the 
house — through a narrow vestibule or outer hallway, 
aftbrding shel.ter to the inner door, and piled with 
rough split wood in readiness for the fire — then into 
the ordinary dwelling-room, bare of floor, scanty of 
furniture, and cold and cheerless looking, in spite 
of the logs blazing beneath the broad chimney. The 
walls were of rough plaster, once whitewashed, but 
now stained and dingy: and nothing broke their 
bareness, except a little shelf,, a foot or two in length, 
hung by rough cords, and bearing half a dozen of 
torn and dogs-eared books, the last refuge — it was 
fair to presume — of the miserable wife from falling 
into the despair of etinui and thence into blank 
idiocy. To this shelf Richard Foy directed his steps, 
at the moment of entering the apartment, in which 
he was for the time alone. Could it be that this man, 
with all his roughness and cruelty, was still a philos- 
opher? Was it his wont, as it has been the habit of 
many men, before and since his time, to soothe his 
perturbed spirit, after moments of special unquiet, by 
converse with those who have expressed themselves 
to the world with the silent voice transcribed into 
the book? So it would have seemed, indeed ; for he 
took down one of the shabby old volumes — some- 
thing hastily and not with extraordinary care, it must 


64 


TJie Spur of Mo?imouth. 


be stated, He took down another, then a third — 
then all the poor little hoard. Then, with a curse 
fitly crowning a destruction under the circumstances 
a thousand times worse and more pitiless than that 
of the Alexandrian Library at the hands of a despot, 
he hurled the poor little wrecks and remnants of civ- 
ilization and learning into the midst of the blazing 
logs on the hearth, and heaped a second curse upon 
them as the hungry fire caught the bared leaves and 
they le^t into flame to become in a few moments 
but a pinch of ashes ! 

“ Learn to read, will she, in my house ! ” he half- 
snarled, half-chuckled. “Perhaps she will, Indian 
nigger, and perhaps not ! Let us see what she will 
do it with, now ! ” — the sneer ending with a curse of 
such ferocity that it may well be left to the imagina- 
tion. 

Neither Sarah Poy nor her child, as yet, could 
know of this new bereavement ; but what must it be 
to both, and especially to the latter, when she should 
come to know ! Aye, what, indeed ! — and what rev- 
enues of profit and enjoyment Richard Foy was 
eventually to reap from the dastardly act ! 


CHAPTER VIII. 

AT THE LODGE OF NEKAI?ESHWA. 

Meanwhile, Indian John was proceeding to his 
lodge — no long distance, as it proved — his strong 
feet treading down the snow beneath his moccasins 
with a step very little like that gliding one proverbi- 
ally ascribed to the red man of the forest. Back 
from the house, across a field cultivated in summer, 
to the edge of the noble wood before noticed ; then 
through the belt and across the partial clearing into 
the main wood — really an unbroken forest, with the 
primitive pines, oaks, chestnuts, maples and hickor- 
ies blended in extraordinary variety and correspond- 
ing size and vigor. The whole distance from the 
house of Foy was not more than half a mile, but the 
ground had risen considerably, all the way from that 
point, and he was upon quite an elevation when he 
stood in front of his lodge and threw from his shoul- 
der the heavy fagot of oaken splints, brought from 
lower and damper ground, possibly miles away, for 
the sake of the easier bending of the material. 

There was yet higher ground, immediately behind 
the lodge : in point of fact, it rose in that direction, 
so near and so suddenly, that some of the earth 
seemed to have been dug away to allow the circle 
standing-place. Reckoned in comparison with the 
ordinary Indian dwelling of the same character, it 
was very large — probably twelve to fifteen feet in 


66 


The Spur of Mofimonth. 


diameter: the centre-pole very tall, and the side- 
poles leaning against it and extending downward to 
the earth to form the cone, each quite high enough 
to have formed the centre-pole for the average abo- 
riginal abode. The first coverings of these poles, as 
partially seen from within, had been smaller poles of 
birch, run around horizontally, and above them the 
white birch bark in immense strips, laid on with so 
much care as to quite imitate if they did not shame 
the tightness of the lapped clapboard. But nothing 
of this could be seen from without, the whole lodge 
having been carefully sodded over, below, to the 
height of five or six feet ; and all above, to the very 
apex, covered with interlaced branches forming a 
very thicket, and leaving the inner structure equally 
impervious to heat, cold and rain. The low doorway 
had a rude attempt at a square wooden frame, planted 
upright ; but there was no door, a heavy piece of old 
painted canvas hanging down as a curtain, backed 
by an inner one in the shape of a coarse red blanket 
with emblematical figures of aboriginal design and 
execution, rendering the protection against the win- 
ter cold no ineffectual one. At a few feet from the 
side of the lodge, rose the piebald trunk of a large 
sycamore, of which the wide-spreading branches, 
though now bare except of a few dark balls, showed 
that in the summer they must supply a strong addi- 
tional protection against both rain and sunshine. 

There was no sign of life about the lodge, as In- 
dian John approached; but as he threw down his 
burthen both the two curtains were swept back, at a 
low point of their height, and a veritable incarnation 
of life appeared, in the shape of a huge gray dog, ap- 
parently crossed of the wolf-dog and the Scotch 


At the Lodge ^of JVekafieshwa. 67 

shepherd — powerful-limbed, grave-faced and watch- 
ful-looking — who had evidently been “ keeping 
house ” during the absence of his master, in a man- 
ner rendering the domicile very safe against intru- 
sion. He looked out from below the curtains ; then, 
at a sign from his master, came out altogether, and 
scanned him and his cast-off load with due attention, 
but without any of that exuberant delight in the re- 
turn, which a more ordinary brute might have exhib- 
ited. It was only when Indian John snapped his 
fingers, thus inviting nearer approach, that the dog 
took the liberty of springing up against him and try- 
ing to reach his face with the caressing tongue. But 
the master addressed him, very much as a civilized 
master might have done, at once pushing him down 
to his proper level, and patting his head with affec- 
tion. 

“ Good dog ! — brave old Bruno ! ” he said. “ Is all 
right Pausing a moment after the question, the 
dog nodded his head, or made so close an imitation 
of that movement that he might well have been 
thought to do so. Again a question ; “ Been any 
one here } ” Apparently to the surprise of the ques- 
tioner, the dog again nodded his head instead of 
shaking it, and then looked around at the lodge. 
“What! some one been here — some one inside, 
now?” A very decided nod of the head followed, 
the face of Indian John immediately expressing ad- 
ditional surprise, and his hand being laid upon the 
outer curtain the next instant, with the words : 
“ Surely Bruno has not meddled with the whisky : 
there must be some one here ! ” 

Bruno, his duty done, and possibly anxious for a 
little outer air, did not return through the curtain : 


68 


TJie Split' of Monmouth. 


his master swept that and the inner one aside, some- 
what rapidly, and stood in the partial dusk within 
the inclosure. Partial dusk ; but not so to eyes ac- 
customed to the night watch and the scout. At once 
he saw a figure extended on the couch of skins 
crossing one side of the little circular room, and 
quite as instantly he recognized it. Crossing quickly 
to the couch, he laid his hand on the shoulder of the 
sleeper, who at the touch sprang erect, and taking in 
the personality of the other at a glance so quick that 
one of a civilized race could scarcely have caught the 
least idea through it, he dropped his head, crossed 
his arms on his breast, and stood without word, in 
an attitude at once of shame and submission. For a 
moment Indian John regarded him in corresponding 
silence; then he said : 

“The Young Catamount has been sleeping; was it 
well > ” 

“It was not well, sachem, that the Young Cata- 
mount made foul the couch of Nekaneshwa, the 
Great Chief, by sleeping upon it without his orders,” 
answered the other, a young savage of tall and ath- 
letic proportions, light of complexion, bright of eye, 
legginged, moccasined, and hunting-shirted, but with- 
out the blanket proper to the bitter winter weather. 
As he spoke, he kept the position at first assumed 
— so like that of an inferior before one very high 
above him: scarcely like that of a criminal before his 
judge. 

“Was it well for the Young Catamount to be 
sleeping, had he found some other couch than that 
of Nekaneshwa ? ” 

“ It was well.” 

“Why?” 


At the Lodge of Nekajieshwa. 69 

“ Because the Young Catamount was very weary. 
He has crossed many leagues since the rising of the 
sun. He has come from the Great River. He could 
not leave the wigwam without seeing Nekaneshwa; 
it was wise to sleep while he waited for Nekane- 
shwa’s coming : it was safe, with Bruno to keep 
watch.” 

“It was well, and the Young Catamount is wel- 
come. He has not had the morning mist drawn over 
his eyes, or his ears made deaf by the sound of fool- 
ish tongues. It was well.” 

As he spoke the last words, Indian John held out 
his right hand, which the young Indian took, and 
bowed his head until the knuckles rested upon his 
forehead, with the simple but so pregnant comment : 

“Nekaneshwa is a great chief. His head is wise, 
and his heart is clear like the running water.” 

“ Humph ! ” in something of the same tone em- 
ployed in using the word when in the company of 
Richard Foy. Then the chief went on : 

“The Young Catamount has come from the Great 
River. Has he seen the camp of the Great White 
Chief, a whole day beyond ? ” 

“ He has seen.” 

“ Has the Young Catamount given the talking-leaf 
to the sachem of the pale-faces } ” 

“ He has done as Nekaneshwa said.” 

“ Has he brought back any talking-leaf from the 
white sachem ? ” 

“ He has brought it. It has not left the heart of 
the Young Catamount for even a moment. It is 
here : he gives it to Nekaneshwa, and asks if he has 
done well and may go away to his lodge to eat and 
to sleep ? ” 


70 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


He found no answer, at first ; for as he drew a small 
sealed packet from within the breast of his hunting- 
shirt, the Indian chief took it with great haste and 
scant ceremony, as hurriedly broke the seal, and ran 
his eye over the words it contained. Then, his dark 
eyes brightened with pleasure, and he laid his broad 
hand on the shoulder of the younger. 

“The Young Catamount has done well — very 
well,” he said. “ He has proved himself a fleet run- 
*ner and a true brave of his tribe. He shall be told 
of for this in the songs of the Delawares, when many 
seasons have laid him with his fathers and made his 
children old. He has won the right to go to his 
lodge, to eat and to sleep, with none to disturb him 
until he wishes. He ma)'^ tell the braves, and the 
squaws of his tribe, that Nekaneshwa says so much. 

^ And now he will give Nekaneshwa his hand, not as 
to a great chief, but as to a friend and brother. Let 
it be so ; Nekaneshwa has said.” 

Nothing less than this positive command could 
have inspired the young savage, it is probable, with 
that confidence necessary to obey this request of 
great honor. For he trembled with agitation as he 
held out his hand, and as the chief grasped it closely 
and warmly. Then he seemed to remember that he 
was giving way to more emotion than was admissible 
for one of the Lenni-Lenape, drew himself proudly 
up as he returned the grasp with a pressure only less 
close and sinewy, and said : 

“Nekaneshwa is a great chief, but he must not 
make the Young Catamount into a squaw, by saying 
soft words in his ear! The Young Catamount will 
not forget ; but he will go to his wigwam, and when 
Nekaneshwa calls he will come.” 


At the Lodge of Nekaneshwa. 71 

Bending low for an instant, with the same manner 
which he had assumed on the first coming of the 
chief, the young savage made no other farewell, but 
passed out of the lodge and away, Bruno returning 
in his place when he had gone, and stretching him- 
self out by the side of the couch on which Indian 
John had thrown himself, the letter still open in his 
hand, and his face giving far more evidence of in- 
tense thought than of any intention to imitate its 
late occupant by falling away into slumber. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE FAMILY IN CHARGE OF MARC ANTONY. 

A SECOND removal of the scene of action, though 
but a trifling one compared with the distance trav- 
ersed between the headquarters of the suffering 
army at Valley Forge, and the wooded plains of 
Monmouth. Only a mile northeastward from the 
lodge of Indian John ; only a mile and a hajf from 
the spot where Richard Foy emulated, in a small 
way, the ruthless destroyers of old. 

Marc Antony was in trouble. He could scarcely 
have been in worse had a new intimation come to 
him from O’Murphy, the quizzical Irish schoolmas- 
ter who dispelled a little of the gross ignorance of 
the children in the scattered section, that irreverent 
persons, at the tavern, had again been trifling with 
his classical cognomen, that of a true old Roman 
hero, and spelling it “ Mark Anthony,” thus combin- 
ing two names which he hated the worst in the 
world, for the sake of their owners, Black Mark, a 
brutal, chicken-stealing half-breed, and Lame Tony, 
the blacksmith, the worst-tempered and most pro- 
fane old reprobate within his limited personal knowl- 
edge of the community. 

Marc Anton5^ as already said, was in trouble. 
What Marc Antony himself was, may in some degree 
be deduced from his name — it not being at all prob- 
able that any other than one of his class would have 


. The Family in Charge of Marc Antony. 73 

been overloaded, and so to speak, oppressed, with so 
grand an appellation as that of the gallant lover of 
Cleopatra. Marc Antony was, in short, a slave — 
one of that class of negroes already then rapidly 
diminishing in New Jersey, but holding on, in that 
State, under the conservative character of the laws, 
much farther into the nineteenth century, than in 
any of the other States similarly located as to lati- 
tude. Inquired of, as to his full name, Marc Antony 
would have answered, with no little pursing of lips 
already full enough, and a general drawing of the 
whole tawny countenance into the highest expres- 
sion of pride of which it was capable: “Marc An- 
tony W.ayne, sah ! ” — the latter name being that of 
the family to which he “ belonged ” in one sense, and 
held himself to belong in another, and his pride in 
using it materially increased by the reputation al- 
ready achieved by “Mad Anthony” of that ilk, as 
among the thunderbolts of the patriot service. 

Personally, Marc Antony was of moderate stature 
— not more than five feet seven, but with breadth of 
shoulder and wiriness of limb, enough to make him 
an adept at Avrestling and a dangerous foe in any spe- 
cies of antagonistic encounter, those qualities the 
oftener exercised, no doubt, from the existence of 
another negro of nearly the same build and ap- 
pearance, his rival in personal strength, and also 
bearing the rival classical name of Julius Caisar, be- 
longing to the Burt family, among the nearest neigh- 
bors of the Waynes, and frequently matched with 
him in athletic encounters through the agency of 
those mischief-makers already beginning to form no 
inconsiderable element in the scattered rural society. 
Not black, but dark tawny, with a well-wooled, round 

4 


74 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


bullet head, and rather well-formed features except 
in those bulging lips and a little flatness of the end 
of the nose — Marc Antony was held, and certainly 
he held himself, a very personable specimen of the 
race, as he was indeed a most creditable representa- 
tive of that form of feudality — industrious beyond 
the wont of his kind, faithful to the death, honest as 
men of higher condition might wish themselves to 
be, and proud of “ de family, yes, sah ! ” to an extent 
holding them little less than gods and goddesses, to 
be judged by no others than themselves, except one 
single tribunal — himself, Marc Antony ! 

Head of the family indeed, and in no limited sense, 
Marc Antony no doubt considered himself. For 
other head there was none, reckoning headship in 
the paternal way. Thomas Wayne, in his youth an 
officer in the British naval service, and afterward a 
well-to-do settler on the fertile grounds of the Marl- 
borough ridge — Thomas Wayne had been dead, and 
buried in the grounds of pious Mr. Tennant’s church 
at Monmouth, for a good seven years. He had left a 
widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Wayne, a son, also Thomas 
(the tradition of the family), and a daughter Eliza- 
beth, always called Bessie by way of distinguishing 
her from her mother. When at home, Tom Wayne 
perhaps well enough supplied the place of the 
“ head,” with his youthful dash and energy ; and the 
somewhat extensive farming operations (for the time) 
of his three or four hundred acres, together with the 
interest of a water-saw-mill located on a large brook 
at half a mile distance from the house, in the edge of 
the great forest sweeping away northwestward to the 
Raritan, never suffered in his active hands. But Tom 
Wayne was a sufferer under ancestral blood ; that of 


The FaiJiily in Charge of Marc Atiiofiy. 75 

the naval officer ran through his veins ; the sound of 
the sea rang constitutionally in his ears ; and through 
those ears there also rang the stories of his father, 
told many a night beside the winter fire, and many a 
day at their labors afield — stories of the sea and the 
storm — of encounters with the French, deeds of dar- 
ing, and routh of prize-money, the proceeds of some 
of it going to the purchase of the very Firm on which 
they were dwelling. The spirit of adventure thus 
created, without the sea-bias to influence it, would 
undoubtedly have driven the young patriot either 
into the army, or at least into guerrilla service during 
the winters when he had virtually neither employ- 
ment nor necessary oversight on the farm : with that 
influence, it drove him away to the sea-board, into 
the boats of that patriot coast-guerrilla. Captain 
Adam Huyler, on Raritan Bay and the shores within 
and about Sandy Hook. “ Huyler’s Men,” as they 
were called, half in respect and half in derision, prob- 
ably numbered many such amphibious spirits, and 
were assuredly troublesome customers to the British 
fleets, in their peculiar way, as evidenced by the fact 
that one of the camp-poets of the time (Major Andre, 
perhaps, as he rhymed perpetually, in the midst of 
his warlike duties) gave them the recognition of a 
burlesque song, supposed to be sung by themselves, 
of which some of the belittling stanzas are yet pre- 
served in rare broadsides of the years close following 
the struggle : 

“ We’re a gallant band, 

With three gun-boats ; 

And most frightfully grand 
Are our warlike notes. 

Our drum is tin. 

And our fife is lead ; 


76 


The Spur of Moiimonth. 


And the l^oat they’re in 
Goes always ahead. 

“ Sometimes we fight, 

And sometimes we fish ; 

And the tom-cods bite 
Whenever we wish. 

# # # # # 

“We showed our pluck 

On a tender, with sheep ; 

Captain drunk — oh what luck f — 

And the crew all asleep. 

So we took the sheep. 

And we left the men ; 

And they’d better go sleep, 

If they want us again ! 

“ There are plums on the Hook, 

There are clams on shore ; 

And we took one look 
At a seventy-four. 

Then we scudded inside. 

And we rattled our tin ; 

And she’ll want more tide 
Before she gets in ! ’* 

* # * * # 

That Tom Wayne, now absent on that service, 
would never have dared to leave mother and sister un- 
protected, in that time of trouble, when Jersey had so 
lately been the leading theatre of conflict, and might 
so easily become the same theatre again — this is 
very evident ; and it is equally evident that they had 
no protector, resident within the walls of home, ex- 
cept the faithful negro. So that, as already said, it 
was in no small degree that Marc Antony could 
claim to be the “head of the family,” There was 


The Family in Charge of Marc Antony, 77 

another protector, truly, whose title to that appella- 
tion may eventually become reasonably clear, and 
his motive no mystery ; but the fact remains that he 
was, at least for the time, an outsider, and thus de- 
serving of only moderate consideration. 

Twice before, it has been recorded that Marc An- 
tony was in trouble, without the least hint of the 
special circumstances surrounding that important 
personage. Let it be known, then, that he was 
standing at the gate of the snow-covered yard lying 
before the gambrel-roofed, broad. Dutch-looking 
old stone farm-house of the Waynes, at between nine 
and ten o’clock of a sharp winter night (in the same 
month of January, 1778), — looking out with impa- 
tience on the white fields lying away before it, far as 
the eye could reach, listening for some sound that 
could relieve him of the impatience which was de- 
vouring him, and varying both those occupations 
with occasional mutterings, some of which fell into 
words explanatory as well as intelligible. 

“ Dem young folks 'sarve to be cowhided, hope I 
may go to glory if they don’t — bofe of ’em ! ” was 
the enunciation of the thick lips, Marc Antony prov- 
ing his Oriental blood, the while, spite of the cold oi 
the night, by hanging on one of the gate-posts. 
“Gone off sleddin’, spite of all I tole ’em, and the 
Lord o’ massy ony knows where dey’s gone, or wher 
dey’s cornin’ back. Ki-yi ! — dat’s wot comes c 
being in love — makes fools o’ people — dat’s what i' 
does — nuffin’ else. Go leetle teenty bit too fur dowt 
some of dem are roads, a billin', and cooin’, anc 
canoodlin’ ; and some o’ dem Hushuns or Ruffages 
grab ’em and tote ’em off to de sugar-house ; or ole 
Fagan he git hold of ’em, and den dey done gone. 


78 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 

suah ! Confound all young fool people! — keepin’ 
ole missus winkin’ and blinkin’ and half asleep foah 
de fire, and me lookin’ out for ’em, out heah in de 
cold, jest as if we hadn’t no feelin’, none of us ! But 
I ain’t goin’ to do it any moah, mind dat now — ain’t 
goin’ to do it any moah I Jest got froo with dem 
fool young people, and goin’ to tell ’em so, foh suah ! 
— yes, sah ! ” 

Having declared himself to which effect, Marc An- 
tony proved his relationship to the great body of 
humanity by continuing to do what he had just an- 
nounced that he would cease doing at once and for- 
ever — holding his post (in both senses) at the gate, 
and keeping his anxious watch for the certainly im- 
prudent wanderers, only varying the employment by 
occasionally glancing round his eye toward the 
house, to see that everything was quiet in that direc- 
tion, and to mark that the light still came out 
through the drawn white curtains, from the room 
where the mistress was' keeping the inner watch 
while he maintained the outer. 

At last, and when the series of mutterings had been 
two or three times repeated, came the sound for 
which he had waited so impatiently — the quick 
tramp of horses’ feet, driven fast over*trodden snow, 
with the occasional bump of the runner against some 
obstacle, and then the clear ring of girlish laughter, 
sounding much farther through the night air than 
the manly voice that may have accompanied it. The 
sounds came nearer; there was the heavy thud — 
thud — of the hoofs over a bridge spanning the 
meadow-brook only a hundred or two of yards away ; 
then two voices in the very riot of enjoyment could 
be easily distinguished ; and then Marc Antony knew 


The Fajnily in Charge of Marc Ant.ny. 79 

that his truants were safely returning, and indulged 
in an extra growl in acknowledgment of his satis- 
faction. 

“ Dem fool young people is a cornin’ at last ! ” he 
remarked. “ Wonder why dey didn’t stay out ail 
night, while dey was at it — eh, honey ! Wish some 
of dem Hushuns had cotched ’em — by golly I do: 
den see what dey’d ha’ done next time ! ” 

No more monologue ; for then the flying hoofs 
came nearer still ; the sharp crack of a whip rang 
out, in the use of that instinct which makes all hu- 
manity draw up at a goal with speed beyond that of. 
the journey ; and then Lewis Forman reined two 
smoking horses at the gate, bringing them to an ab- 
solute stand-still on the instant, and showing the 
perfect command under which he held the noble ani- 
mals. Marc Antony, though there was not the 
slightest occasion for such a service, was at the 
heads of the horses in a moment — thus showing his 
disgust at the detention and his disregard of the 
riders; and the young sled-driver .handed out his 
precious freight in the person of pretty Bessie 
Wayne. 

“ Golly massy, how long you’s been gone, Masser 
Lewis! ” Marc Antony indulged his past anxiety by 
saying, while that disembarkation was taking place. 
“ Been monsus frightened about you, — me and mis- 
sus ! Tain’tgood, Masser Lewis — tain’tgood, honey, 
now I tell you ! Don’t know when dem dare Hush- 
uns may be around ; and den Fagan — ” 

“Oh, don’t fear for tts, Marc Antony,” answered 
the girlish voice of Bessie, as she reached the snowy 
walk, held by strong arms as she descended ; and; 

“ Oh, you’re always having the red-coats after us. 


8o 


The Spur of Mo?imo7ith. 


Markie, and there isn’t one within fifty miles ! ” was 
the confident assurance of the cavalier, coming out 
round, strong and frank, as beseemed the appearance 
of the speaker. “ Hessians ! Why they haven’t for- 
gotten Trenton and Princeton, Markie ; and they 
wouldn’t touch Jersey soil, again, of their own ac- 
cord, much quicker than they would Purgatory.” 

“All right, honey!” (meaning “all wrong”) was 
the reply of Marc Antony, preparing to lead around 
the horses to the shelter of the rick-yards, against 
some hours of indoor delay which he thought very 
probable. “All right, honey! Jest you go on, till 
some of ’em cotches you and young missy here ; ony 
don’t say dat I didn’t tole you — dat’s all.” 

The negro departed with the horses and sled — the 
latter a sad difference from what constitutes the 
sleigh of the present, being nothing more nor less 
than the body of a farm-wagon, well filled with straw 
at bottom, set upon the runners of a wood-sled fresh 
from its daily use on the Forman farm. The two sub- 
jects of his anxiety disappeared within doors nearly 
at the same time, to find an ample fire blazing in the 
great fire-place of the sitting-room, in waiting for 
their return, and Mrs. Elizabeth Wayne, by no means 
so cruelly anxious as their servitor, just laying down 
her glasses from a long perusal of that Book of 
Books of which the special office is to relieve the 
mind from all undue earthly anxieties whatever. 

It is by the broad fire-light and cheerful candle- 
light of that neat, large whitewashed room, with 
plain old furniture, Tom’s gun on hooks over the 
mantel, and a few engravings of sea-scenes and naval 
^^^^fi^i^cnts on the walls — that that view must be 
caught, necessary briefly to describe three personages 


The Fa?mly in Charge of Marc Antony. 8i 

of as much consequence to this narration, .as the 
widow of Thomas Wayne, her daughter, and the man 
who so evidently held the position of confidential 
friend if not of lover. 

A gray-haired, placid-faced woman of fifty — the 
widow, with a tall form which had once been robust, 
and with considerable traces of • good-looks, not to 
say beauty, yet lingering in her face ; evidently ver}'- 
proud of her daughter, toward whom her eyes trav- 
eled often and admiringly, as one looks upon some 
work in which one’s own hands have been actively 
concerned, and which meets the v’ery fullest ap- 
proval. 

A younger copy of her mother — Bessie Wayne, 
the daughter. A little taller than the average of 
girlhood, and with that strength and erectness of 
figure, now fading away from the elder, present in 
all the fresh charm of youth. A clear-cut face, with 
the least trifle of turn-up of the nose, leading to a 
suspicion of mischief, declared or hidden ; full lips, 
with the power of setting themselves firmly, perhaps 
stubbornly, on occasion ; dark-brown hair, straight, 
glossy and very abundant; eyes of soft, dark gray, 
blended with warmer hazel ; and the head carried 
so proudly on the neck as to denote more energy of 
character, and possibly more of self-containment and 
self-will, than would have been declared by any 
other detail of the whole conformation. In age, 
somewhere within that period of just perfected 
womanhood ranging between twenty and twenty- 
five : fit to be the wife of a hero, and the mother of a 
line of marked men to come after. 

Tall, strong-built, active-limbed, and somehow boy- 
ish-looking, though past twenty-five and possibly 
4 * 


82 


The Spur of Afonmou/h. 

nearer to thirty, Lewis Forman, the confidential 
friend and possibly the lover. With laughing blue 
eyes, and light-brown hair curling into a perfect 
tangle of ringlets on every portion of his round head, 
the ruddy-faced young farmer, who might have stood 
for the statue of one of the gladiators of old, in the 
full flush of youth and strength, bore yet. in spite of 
the thick and coarse wrappings of his winter array, 
the impress of the natural gentleman as well as the 
good fellow — one who had fared well and lived en- 
joyingly during his brief period of manhood, but to 
whom crosses and discomforts might come, without 
seriously taxing his capacities or creating any feel- 
ing of excessive hardship when at the very worst. 

And thus for the present we leave the three, 
around the mighty blazing wood-fire, fresh and re- 
plenished on the coming in of the riders — the rid- 
ers themselves jubilant in the recollection and de- 
scription of their late whirl over the thick-l5dng 
snow, in the sharp night-air and at the heels of two 
horses flying at speed : and the widow, as was her 
wont on such occasions, blending pleasure in their 
enjoyment, with inevitable remembrances of the 
desolate condition of the country, fears for the fu- 
ture that might be coming, and wishes for the safety 
and early return home of her darling vagabond Tom, 
haunting the adventurous element of his father in 
the company of Huyler and his men on Raritan. 


CHAPTER X. 

A STOCK EXCHANGE OF 1778. 

It is not to be supposed that Marc Antony, having 
enjoyed a sufficient amount of the keen wintry air 
while awaiting the return of the sledge-riders, was 
likely to spend the remainder of the evening out-of- 
doors, while there was a blazing fire in the kitchen, 
with Aunt Pruey, cook and virtual housekeeper, of 
his own color, and two farm-hands, resting from 
their daily labor of chopping in the woods, making 
company for himself in that well-heated apartment. 
No — the “head of the house,” though he might 
sometimes sacrifice his ideas of comfort to the whims 
of others, still held them in full force, and was al- 
ways disposed to put them in operation when noth- 
ing more important prevented. So, having seen his 
truants safely returned, and thus relieved of his 
great anxiety, Marc Antony, as we have seen, drove 
round the spanking team to the shelter of a large 
shed, adjoining the barn and forming a lee from the 
cold north wind, — where he carefully blanketed the 
noble animals, receiving more than one grateful 
whinny in return for his care, and keeping up a one- 
sided conversation with them (except as the whinny 
may have supplied the other), in which the real good- 
ness of the negro’s nature, and his disposition to do 
a certain amount of amiable grumbling, were as 
equally exhibited as during his waiting at the gate. 


84 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“ Hold still, will you, jes while I fasten dis yere 
buckle — you fool boss, dat doesn’t know de fust 
thing ’bout genteel ’haviour ! Golly, you jes do dat 
agin, and I leaves you standin’ in de cold, widout a 
rag on your contrary ole back — I do dat, suah ! 
Woa, den ! — dat’s a good boss, and ’have youself, ef 
you knows how!” Then his monologue continued, 
not to the horses, but of them. “Must fix ’em up 
nice and warm, suah I — for ony see how dat pepper- 
box young fellow’s been makin’ ’em smoke — jes like 
damp hay in hot wedder ! Sin and shame, to drive 
nice pair o’ bosses so fast, and den leave ’em a- 
standin’ here in de cold, while he — ki-yi I — hain’t he 
got a nice thing of it, in yonder.^ Umph-umph ! — 
oh my I Woa, den ; and dat makes you all right, ole 
bosses, for de next two hours, suah ; for you don’t 
catch hiin goin’ afore midnight — not if old missus 
don’t put him out de doah, wid de broom ! ” 

Finishing his labor, and chuckling over the idea 
just evoked, of the mild Mrs. Elizabeth Wayne put- 
ting the handsome and stalwart “ beau ” of her dar- 
ling daughter, out of doors at point of broom, and 
giving the flank of each of the dusky pets a concilia- 
tory pat to let them know that he left them in amity 
and what he believed full comfort — Marc Antony 
left the inclosure, advising one or two of the sleepy 
cows that had been disturbed by the opening of the 
yard-gate, to go back to bed in the straw and not 
make fools of themselves, like white folks 1 A few 
moments brought him tcf the kitchen, where Aunt 
Pruey was just brewing an immense pitcher of hot 
spiced cider for the people in the other room, with a 
plate of hot roast apples to keep it company, — and 
where, by general consent, a duplicate pitcher of the 


A Stock Excha 7 tge ^1778. 85 

mulled cider, and a certain number of cold griddle- 
cakes “warmed over,” were to do duty in the way of 
home consumption. The kitchen was well heated, 
by something less than a quarter of a cord of oak 
wood, in full low ; the ample store of pewter and tin 
glittered brightly on shelves and dresser; Aunt 
Pruey was in markedly good humor (as in sooth she 
was not always !) — and Marc Antony, once installed 
in a big, wood-bottomed chair near the fire, with 
half-a-dozen of the griddle-cakes appropriated, and 
two mugs of hot cider to float them, began to be 
exceedingly comfortable. When he had succeeded 
in inveigling one of the farm-hands into a game of 
draughts, at which his slow brain and clumsy fingers 
were sure to be no match for those of his tempter, 
so that victory was assured beforehand — then Marc 
Antony may be said to have been very comfortable 
indeed — as near to perfect happiness as poor bad- 
gered humanity often reaches. For the time he was 
oblivious, or careless, of the spelling of his name; 
of any possible boasts of his rival, Julius Caesar; of 
anxiety about young master Tom, away with the 
gun-boats; of regard for the Hushuns, the Ruffages, 
old Fagan, or any other of the bites tioires usually 
supplying him matter for animadversion. 

Alas ! Marc Antony — . But any philosophical re- 
flections on the evanescent nature of human content, 
would be out of place and premature. 

The happiness was quite as declared and perfect in 
the sitting-room, with its three occupants, as in the 
kitchen with its four. There might have been one 
disturbing element; but if so, it had not yet come 
into fatal prominence. The shadow of absent Tom 
did not press heavily enough upon either mother or 


$6 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


daughter, to make them oblivious of pleasant faces 
still remaining to them ; and it was possible, even 
yet, to hope that the tide of war might roll else- 
where, to the end of the struggle, without still more 
deeply bathing the Jersey plains in blood. 

The one disturbing element : it was this. Patriot 
to the core, and brave as any Paladin of the moyen 
age, Lewis Forman believed it his duty to be in the 
field, with Washington and the other leaders of the 
fight for Independence, then already one-and-a-half 
years declared ; and no second look at brow and 
figure was needed, to see that his whole tempera- 
ment went with that sense of duty — that he would 
naturally love to be in the thick of any conflict 
which could commend itself to his conscience and 
his reason. But he had an invalid mother, to leave 
whom, for any long time and any service of probable 
danger, was to kill her beyond a peradventure — Dr. 
Woodhull having months before pronounced his fiat 
to that effect, and bidden the young man choose be- 
tween so fatal an issue and the abandonment of any 
wish sending him to the field. 

And what of Bessie Wayne — true daughter of her 
father, and true sister, in at least one regard, of vag- 
abond Tom ? What of her — so ardent a patriot that 
one of her bold defiances went home to England with 
the troops of Clinton, and became a toast of respect 
among a nation notably preferring a bold and open 
enemy to any covert or concealed .> Why, this, and 
this only: she would have cut off that plump and 
shapely right arm, with all its glory of dimpled hand 
and rosy fingers, rather than suffer any wish or feel- 
ing of hers to keep one soldier, however she might 
love him and be anxious for his safety, away from 


A Stock Excha?ige of 1778. 


87 


the side of Washington. But it was of another than 
herself that she judged, when measuring the duty of 
Lewis Forman ; and it was her voice that forbade 
him to go away, while his mother lived and yet lived 
at his mercy. She felt that she would be misjudged 
— almost knew that such a result was inevitable ; and 
yet the owner of that neck and those lips could not 
swerve from what she believed to be the right, for 
any peril of human judgment, just as she would not 
have faltered at any ordinary danger to her physical 
body. 

Once, that memorable evening, when the mulled 
cider had been discussed, and the lovers, sitting very 
near each other, had so far braved the proprieties in 
the presence of the mother as to be holding each 
other's hands in that sweetest mark of pleased com- 
panionship — once, some word of Mrs. Wayne’s led 
the conversation in that direction ; and the cheek of 
the young man flushed in the recollection of what 
was and what might have been. He did not say a 
word, however; he merely looked around at the 
speaking face by his side, and the unspoken inquiry 
was fully understood. 

“No, Lewis — no!” — with a slight shake of the 
head, and the words so low that it was doubtful 
whether the mother could hear them. No other 
speech was needed: in that single expression the 
possibility of Lewis Forman’s joining the ranks of 
the patriot army, was once more as effectually 
crushed as it could have been by pages of implora- 
tion and whole volumes of reasoning. Whatever 
for — whatever against — it was not tp be; that was 
all! 

Hours pass rapidly with such surroundings ; per- 


88 


The Spur of Mo?i77io2ith, 


haps it maybe said that in no single circumstance of 
human life can so many flying minutes manage to 
hide themselves under the mantle of the past, with 
so little impression of their flight on the mind of him 
or her who has lately been their owner — as when 
the communion is that of courtship, and the beauti- 
ful present made brighter by the hopes of that 
future which is to be so ravishing. It had been a 
little past ten o’clock when the sledge-riders re- 
turned ; scarce half an hour seemed to have passed, 
since then, when the perverse old clock in the corner, 
reckless or spiteful, insisted upon making a loud 
preliminary whirr among its brazen wheels, and then 
hammering out with offensive loudness — twelve ! 

Full midnight, with the possibility of his invalid 
mother being seriously alarmed at an absence be- 
yond his wont ! Lewis Forman sprang at once from 
his seat, with an exclamation of surprise, went to the 
door leading into the kitchen, opened it for a little 
space, and said : 

“ Markie, my horses and sled, old fellow ! — I must 
be off for home.” 

“Yes, Masser Lewis — jes in three shakes of a lamb’s 
tail ! Keep warm by de fire, honey, till I brung ’em ! ” 
was the answer from the kitchen, coming in muffled 
tones which indicated that the mouth uttering them 
was also in use for other and alimentary purposes, 
however late the hour. Thus assured, and aware of 
a few minutes to wait, the young man went back to 
his seat, possibly rather glad than the reverse that 
there were still those few minutes remaining, and no 
doubt fully realizing how much more delicious are 
those few las^ drops in the cup, than a whole draught 
which may have preceded them, 


A Stock Exc/ia?ige of 1778. 


89 


But those few minutes grew to many, and no sound 
without told that Marc Antony was coming back 
with the sled. Other minutes, until much more than 
a quarter of an hour had elapsed ; and Lewis was 
about to go himself to the sheds, under the impres- 
sion that some accident must have occurred with 
the horses, when rapid steps within the yard told 
that the negro was returning. Before a word could 
be spoken, the front door was rather burst open 
than unclosed in the ordinary manner, and Marc 
Antony stood in view, perhaps the veriest spectre 
and image of terror that had been presented by any 
representative of a race not generally too brave, 
within the previous century. 

It would be false to say that the negro was white 
— such an alteration of color being impossible. But 
it is true to say that he was pale — pale to absolute 
ghastliness: that change from the ordinary complex- 
ion being as easily marked as would be the chalked 
face of a white, when simulating fright or sickness, 
on the stage. His hat was gone ; his lips bulged and 
curled much more than usual, apparently in the im- 
possibility of saying what he wished ; and there 
seemed danger of the always-protruding eyes liter- 
ally starting out of their sockets, where they rolled 
loosely and helplessly. 

“Why, good Lord, Markie, what is the matter?” 
Lewis was the first to inquire, though the others, 
with himself, marked the piteous state of terror in 
which the poor fellow stood. 

“’Fore God, Masser Lewis! — ” Marc Antony be- 
gan ; but even then the weight of his revelation 
seemed too much for his capacity, and he paused 
again in the same helplessness. 


90 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“What is it, Marc? Wiiy don’t you speak?” 
somewhat severely asked Bessie, whose least word 
was nearer law to the negro than the thunders of all 
the other voices upon earth. 

“ Oh, missy ! ” at last he managed to stammer out, 
“ hope I may go to glory dis minnit, ef de ole Black 
Debbil hissef hain’t come, right out dere under de 
shed.” 

“ Oh, is that all ! But where are my horses ? ” an- 
swered the young man, the reverse of superstitious, 
and now really in a hurry to go home. 

“ Dat’s what’s de matter, Masser Lewis ! ” the ne- 
gro responded, his tongue at last beginning to come 
into use again, in the reassuring presence of others. 
“’Fore God, dere ain’t no bosses! — ony where dey 
wus, dere’s sumfin dat has got great big horns ; .and 
it must be Ole Sam hissef dat has got into ’em ! 
’Fore God, masser and missuses, ’tain’t no joke, now, 
suah ! Sumfin dreffle’s been agoin’ on, out in dat 
dere yard ; and dis nigga don’t understand it, no 
how ! ” 

“What, no horses? Do you mean to say that my 
‘ horses are gone ? ” impatiently asked Lewis, naturally 
much more alive to that detail than any other part 
of the negro’s statement. 

“Don’t mean to say nuffin, Masser Lewis — ony 
dat things is dreffle queer out dere, and dat I wish 
you’d ony come out yousef, 'cause I don’t know 
'bout what’s goin’ on, seems to me.” 

“ Why, by the Lord, this is a little too much I ” ex- 
claimed Forman. “ Markie, that cider out in the 
kitchen must have been stronger than what we had 
here ; or have you been down to the Court-House 
and brought home a jug of whisky?” 


A Stock Exchange of 8. gi 

“Not a drop of whisky! — hope I may die ef I’ve 
tetched any since New Year’s. Sober as a judge — 
yes, sah ! But just you come and see for yousef ! ” 

“Well, I must, it seems, then, as I am to have no 
horses if I do not,” said the young man, half-laugh- 
ing, and preparing to look into the matter for 
himself. 

“ Stop, Lewis, there may be something wrong, in- 
deed : let me get the lantern,” spoke Bessie ; and 
while Lewis looked around in admiration at the 
woman who displayed such useful presence of mind 
in emergency, she stepped rapidly into the kitchen, 
and was back in an instant with the lighted lantern, 
ready for use. Another instant, and her hood came 
down from a convenient closet and was on her head, 
while a wrap was thrown around her shoulders. 

“ What, 3.rejyou going out, Bessie ? ” asked Lewis. 

“ Tain’t good for you to go, missy — mind I tole 
you so ! ” warned Marc Antony. 

“ I am going with you, to see what all this is about, 
if you have no objection,” was the complacent reply 
to her lover. “Why, don’t you hear.^ — Marc says 
that Old Hornie is out there I I have never seen 
His Majesty, yet; and who knows when I may find 
another chance ? Come!” 

In the face of such a determination, as, indeed, in 
the face of nearl)'- any determination which Bessie 
Wayne chanced to form, not much was to be said ; 
and the next moment every inmate of the house, 
except Mrs. Wayne, was on the way to the barn and 
the rick- 5 ’'ards ; the young girl showing her determi- 
nation to catch a glimpse of “ Old Hornie” in the 
event of his being within view, by herself carrying 
the lantern, 


92 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


Troublous times were those of '78 and following, 
and events of importance were destined to meet the 
eyes of all those present — coming with startling 
rapidity; but it may be doubted whether any one of 
them ever lost, in the most absorbing of those 
events, the recollection of the scene presented by 
the light of Bessie Wayne’s lantern, when the ob- 
scurity of the shed beneath which the negro had 
tied and blanketed Lewis Forman’s horses, was fully 
illumined by the light which it cast. Quite a moment 
was necessary to realize what was there, and what 
had really occurred ; and when that realization was 
complete, the reception of the discovery by each of 
the principal persons was eminently characteristic. 

Bessie Wayne gazed for a moment steadily at the 
spectacle, realized it and its omens much more 
rapidly than would have been the case with most of 
her sex, and looked steadily around at Lewis, as the 
one principally concerned and the one whose action 
must guide that of others. A happy omen, for Lewis 
Forman, if he saw it, as possibly he did — of the 
woman who had been formed to supply one of the 
most reliant while one of the tenderest of wives, and 
who would as certainly look to the lord of her life 
for guidance and direction, in anything involving his 
presence and his welfare, as she would supply the 
same resources from her own unfailing energy, in the 
• event of his absence or disability ! 

Marc Antony looked long and steadily at the com- 
posite object presented to view, before he summed 
up his faith in one comprehensive exclamation : 

“ De old Black Debbil done been here, suah ! — - 
and hope I may go to glory ef he hasn’t just turned 
dem bosses into cows — nuffin else ! ” 


A Stock Exchange of 1778. 


93 


Lewis Forman perhaps hesitated longer than either 
of the others, before acting on the sight. Assuredly, 
if Marc Antony was correct, and the “ Black Debbil ” 
had turned his horses into cows, he was very materi- 
ally the loser, neat cattle not ranging at nearly so 
much per head as well-bred horses, of which his own 
had been even rare specimens. But the drolls of 
this world recognize their kin and the actions of 
that kinship, at all time and in all places ; and noth- 
ing less than a death before his very eyes could have 
hindered or checked the first necessity of his nature, 
when he fully realized the whole affair. That was, 
to lean against the side of the sled and give vent to a 
hearty, double peal of the most genuine and uprdari- 
ous laughter! — the two parts being broken between 
by the worded exclamation : 

“The devil catch the infernal scoundrel, as he will! 
But it is too good ; oh Lord, it is too good ! ” 

Not much marvel that in the dark, Marc Antony, 
going to drive out a pair of horses, should have 
been slightly astonished at finding them the pos- 
sessors of horns, and shown the superstition of his 
blood by coming to the conclusion that some diab- 
lerie had really been perpetrated, even if the Prince 
of Darkness was not himself then present, horn 
and hoof! For the horses had not only been stolen 
from before the sled, but the thieves, possibly on 
the watch and well advised how long Lewis For- 
man was likely to remain within doors on so cold a 
night, and how little probability there was of the 
sheltered and well-blanketed pair being visited by 
any one from the house meanwhile, — had thrown a 
grim humor into the theft, by carefully placing the 
harness on two quiet cows standing under another 


94 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


part of the shed, attaching them properly to the 
vehicle, and tying their heads fast with ropes to the 
hitching-poles, just where the horses had stood ; so 
that, however the owner might be defrauded, he 
would not be inconvenienced by the lack of a span 
for his homeward journey ! 

“Who has done this, Lewis?” asked Bessie, when 
her lover’s explosion of laughter was fairly over. 

“ Dat is ole Fagan, missy — suah ! ” was the sen- 
tentious judgment of Marc Antony, who had at last 
recovered from his impression of the supernatural, 
and thus fell back on another of his pet terrors. 

“Yes, Markie, that is old Fagan, sure enough ; he 

has left his handwriting, him!” replied the 

robbed horseman, with as much force in the latter 
part of his speech as there had been of merriment 
in that lately preceding. “ But I am much obliged 
to him, Bessie, after all,” he added, a moment later. 
“ He has done what all the others have failed to do, 
including myself. He has told me what is my duty, 
and I hope that he will like it when I do it ! ” 

“What is it, Lewis?” again inquired the young 
girl. 

“To hunt him and his gang of robbers out of 
Monmouth, every man Jack of them ! ” he answered, 
with a clear determination in his voice. “I can not 
leave my mother to join the army : see if I can not 
aid the cause as well, with a hundred or two of good 
riders at my back, clearing the Pines where they 
hide, of these very amusing infernal scoundrels ! A 
dear pair of horses to them, Bessie, before I have 
done with them, if they have spoiled our sledge-rides 
for the present ! ” 

“ Dat’s so ! ” indorsed Marc Antony, emphatically. 


A Stock Exchange of 1778. 


95 


“Jes you clar out ole Fagan, and de Hushuns, and 
de Ruffages, and de Cow-Boys, and mebbe dere’ll be 
some use livin’ round dese parts, Masser Lewis ! 
'Spose you don’t want me, to ride wid dem white 
folks ; but ef you do, jes let me know, and I’m thar ! 
Nebber was so scart, in all my born days ! Thought 
it was de Debbil, suah ! ” 

We may have occasion ter see, later, that Bessie 
Wayne, however she might have opposed her lover’s 
leaving his mother and joining the army in Pennsyl- 
vania, had no objection whatever to his exposing 
himself to any honorable peril at home, — and that 
out of the events of that night grew much more than 
could have been anticipated, in the formation of 
“ Forman’s Light-Horse,” destined to so much hon- 
orable employment, and of which it was often re- 
marked, that the leader seemed to have an especial 
penchant for the pursuit and punishment of horse- 
thieves, under whichever service they pretended to 
shelter themselves. 


CHAPTER XL 

SUSAN ALLARDYCE’S TROUBLE. 

“You’re a fool, Sue Allardyce ! — a pesky fool! 
— worse than a fool, a nincom ! If I had my way of 
you. I’d take you up from that sofa, and whale 5'^ou 
soundly, like a school-girl as you are — no, not a 
school-girl, a baby ! ” 

Such was the energetic diction of Miss Hepzibah 
Thorn, hurled at the poor girl who lay with her head 
buried among the pillows of the sofa, and her whole 
figure curled up as if in the effort to compress her 
misery into as small a space as possible. 

“ Please, Aunt Hepzy, don’t scold me ! ” the voice 
came out from among the pillows, very low and 
pleading. “You would ask me — you would make 
me tell ; now you are so hard with me about it ! 
How can / help it. Aunt Hepzy } ” 

“ Well, if you are not the oddest chit of a girl. Sue, 
that ever I saw in all my born days ! ” came the re- 
ply, in the same hard, dry tone. “And if this world 
isn’t all going to wreck and ruin, I should like to 
know what it is doing! Would make you tell.^ — 
What’s that got to do with it, girl? ’Tisn’t the tell- 
ing ; 'tis the doing of the things that must be told. 
In my day — though goodness knows that’s not so 
very long ago, that the world should be changed 
altogether — in my day, a girl would have been 
ashamed, not to own it, but to do it. Just as if any 


Susa ft Aliardyce's Trouble. 


97 


girl had a right to fall in love with a man, until he 
had got well into it first, and told her so, and made 
any amount of fuss about it, and gone down on his 
knees, and all such doings, that at least looked re- 
spectable ! Though, come to that, what they want 
to do it at all for, and what they expect to get out of 
it, is more than / can tell. / never fell in love with 
anybody — that is — ” 

“ Oh, Aunt Hepzy ! ” came from the sofa ; and the 
interruption seemed to produce the elfect sometimes 
brought about by an obstacle in a water-course — ^ 
not to stop the stream, but to turn the current a 
little out of its previous course. 

“ Leastways I never fell in love up to my neck, 
and over head and ears, like that! ” was the conclu- 
sion of the sentence that had been begun so differ- 
ently. 

“You did fall in love deeply enough. Aunt Hepzy, 
to wish and expect to be the wife of — ” the voice 
from the sofa began, but it was suddenly interrupted. 

“ Don’t you dare mention that name. Sue Allar- 
dyce ! — I won’t allow it, and you know as much!” 
broke in the ancient maiden, very suddenly and 
harshly. 

“ Why, Aunt Hepzy ? Why } ” 

“ Because — oh, you know why, well enough ! Be- 
cause I can not bear it, and because I won’t ! There 
— now I suppose that you are happy — pumping out 
all your poor old aunt’s secrets, and then setting up 
to laugh at her, just as if no one, older than a mere 
chit like yourself, had a spark of feeling ! ” 

Could it be believed.^ — there was a sound of sob- 
bing at the window, where Hepzibah Thorn sat, and 
a handkerchief went up to her eyes — not in affecta- 
5 


98 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


tion, but for the real and actual employment of wip- 
ing away tears. An angular old maid, of five-and- 
forty, with enough of years passed since girlhood, 
one would suppose, to have dried the fountain of 
that melancholy flow which confers so much sad 
pleasure all the while — or at least to have turned it 
into some other direction than that channeled by a 
love-passage. But so it was ; and so it has been and 
will be, it is to be feared, from one end of time to the 
other. 

There was no one on the sofa, now. The com- 
forted (alas ! was it comfort, to be upbraided for 
doing what was inevitable ?) — she had become the 
comforter. Abandoning the pillow that had hidden 
her face, Susan Allardyce rose, shook back the cloud 
of fair hair that floated in wild confusion round her 
shoulders, and crossed to the chair where her aunt 
was sitting. As she did so, she showed a plump 
though petite form : a bright and vivacious face, 
well matching that rebellious hair, though now 
clouded with pained feeling ; and the garments of a 
gentlewoman, almost inordinately rich for the time, 
as silks glittered a little, and laces gleamed, and 
there was even a flash of diamond light on finger 
and at throat. Very pretty — very winning — evi- 
dently wealthy in the world’s goods, if manner and 
dress went for anything, and yet but now in tears 
and unquestionably suffering in the very deepest 
recesses of her girlish heart. Girlish — scarcely )’et 
a woman’s in the true meaning of the word ; for not 
more than nineteen to twenty years had as yet 
passed over the fair head, and there should have 
been no shadow on the soul as there was no wrinkle 
on the brow. 


Susan Allardyce’ s Trouble. 


99 


The young girl knelt beside the chair of her aunt, 
and put one arm around her who had so suddenly 
become her sister-sufferer. Then she knew that she 
had not been mistaken — that Hepzibah was verita- 
bly crying, just as herself or one many years younger 
might have been. She made an attempt to draw 
away the hand holding the handkerchief, from the 
not too comely and time-marked face hidden by it. 
For .a time that effort was resisted, though accom- 
panied by assurances that should have melted any 
resentment, if resentment was indeed blended with 
the feeling momentarily entertained by the spinster. 

“Dear Aunt Hepz}^” she pleaded, “do not be an- 
gry with me. I had no right to say what I did ; but 
you must forgive me ; for, indeed, indeed I was feel- 
ing worse than you knew, and I scarcely thought 
what I spoke.” 

Another instant, and then the angular spinster 
threw her arms around the young figure beside her, 
and strained her to her heart as if in her she in some 
sort embraced lost happiness. 

“No, it is I who am the pesky old fool, Susan!” 
she said, the sobs yet in her voice, though they failed 
altogether to soften it. “ If any body is to be for- 
given, I am the one, for I treated you like an old cat 
as I am I ” 

“ No — not like an old cat. Aunt Hepzy — ” 

“ Hold your tongue, child ! I know best what I 
am, and I say that I am an old cat. I have been 
called an ‘ old tabby cat,’ before now ; and they were 
not very far out, I reckon. What right had I,” and, 
yet sitting in her chair, she rocked backward and 
forward with the form of the kneeling young girl 
still in her arms — “what right had I to say a word 


lOO 


The Spur of Mo7ifnoufh. 


to you of your folly, only a year old, when mine, 
that should have been dead for nearly twenty years, 
comes up again at a word and makes me a stupider 
old fool than ever ? ” 

“Not an old fool, aunt, at all, or any kind of a 
fool — only a woman. A woman that I hope will 
not be quite so hard on me, as — ” 

“As I have been — say it out. Sue, and nobody 
will be the worse.” 

“Well, as you have been, then, dear aunt. I can 
not help suffering, but I think that I can learn to 
bear. I did love Lewis Forman so dearly ; and for 
a long, long time — that is, a long time it seemed 
to me — he appeared to love me as well. Then I 
found, all at once, that he had never cared for me 
at all, as — in the way that I wished: that he was 
fond of that nobler and handsomer girl than I can 
ever be, though I do think that she is not quite so 
fine as I am — is she, aunt? — Bessie Wayne ; and if 
I could have bought his love, at that moment, away 
from her, with every pound that I am worth in the 
world — ” 

“ Hush, Sue, don’t say that ! Love is not bought ! ” 

“ Hear me out, aunt ! If I could have bought his 
love away from her, I say, with every pound that I 
am worth in the world, I would have been in rags the 
next day, and he would have been my husband.” 

“Poor girl!” was all the comment of Hepzibah 
Thorn, still holding the fair head so near to her that 
it was half-hidden. 

“Don’t misunderstand nie, aunt,*’ she went on. 
“That was then, not now, though it was not many 
months ago. I have learned better, since, than to 
talk of buying love ; though I have not learned any 


Si^san Allardycc's Trouble, 


lOI 


better than to suffer when all this comes too near. 
Thank heaven that 1 do not see him often, now, as 1 
think that I could not bear it if I did. To-night, 
when I saw them pass, sitting so close, it drove me 
mad for a little while. But 1 will try not to be so 
mad again ; and you must try to bear with me, now 
that you know the truth — you, who have borne so 
much more than I am ever likely to bear, and lived 
to find power to put it under your feet — almost al- 
ways.” 

“Almost always — yes. Sue, almost always. Not so 
nearly, though’, that I can not understand you when 
you suffer, and when I have time to put away the 
impatient temper and hard words of the old cat. 
Perhaps you were right, a little-while ago, and that I 
was wrong. I have nothing to buy, now, for myself ; 
but I would buy your love for you to-morrow, if I 
could. I can not. Well, I can do the next best thing, 
in my poor, hard, old way. I can help you to bear, 
by bearing with you ; for see how I have punished 
myself by being cruel to you for only a few moments. 
Now dry your eyes, get a little of the tangle out of 
your hair, and we will go to supper.” 

The time was earlier on the same evening during 
which we have seen Lewis Forman and Bessie 
Wayne returning from the sledge-ride eventually so 
costly to the former in the expenditure of horse- 
flesh. The place was the parlor of the very hand- 
some house once belonging to Captain John Allar- 
dyce, one of the commissaries of his Britannic 
Majesty’s armies in America, during the French wars 
preceding the Revolution — now, with much other 
property, the heritage of his only daughter and 
heiress, and standing at what W'as then nearly the 


102 The Spur of Montnouth. 

centre of the main street of Freehold, or Monmouth 
Court-House. And the persons, as may be already 
well understood, were Susan Allardyce, that only 
child and wealthy orphan daughter, thus unwittingly 
made to turn out her inmost heart to critical view, — 
and Miss Hepzibah Thorn, well-to-do relative, resid- 
ing under the same roof, and revealing a correspond- 
ing sorrow in the far past, to that pressing upon the 
young girl in the then immediate present. 

Of the grief so long before fallen upon the elder 
lady, no other explanation is necessary in this con- 
nection, than to say that at that far period Captain 
Allardyce had introduced to her one of his brother- 
officers, who wooed and won her, with every expecta- 
tion on her part that a marriage would follow — but 
with the melancholy sequel of subsequent coldness, 
quarrel, repentance when too late, and (as many who 
knew both, believed) the result of the separation an 
after-course of dissipation on the part of the officer, 
leading to disgrace and an early grave, and leaving 
this life-long regret of which we have seen so painful 
evidence, to start into renewed strength under cer- 
tain incitements, and torture anew the angular old 
maid, at other times and under other circumstances 
so truly a member of the chill sisterhood. 

Of Susan Allardyce, nothing more need here be 
said, than what has been already conveyed by her 
own shamed confession. That she truly loved Lewis 
Forman, but with a love now hopeless as absorbing, 
was one of those painful facts affording much more 
matter for pity than for wonder. That that love, now 
hopeless in the knowledge that between the young 
gentleman-farmer and Bessie Wayne was growing a 
tie which promised to bind them for life — might 


Sttsan Allardyce's Trouble, 


103 

work wreck and ruin to the heart that harbored it, 
or that, in God’s good providence some deed of 
heroism or self-abnegation might flow from it, wid- 
ening and ripening the whole nature for a better 
destiny,— this was something far less evident, in 
either of its alternatives j but who could say that 
either lay beyond the bounds of probability? 

Nay, who could forecast, that winter night when 
the snow lay thick on .Monmouth plains, answering 
well to that which enveloped the suffering army of 
freedom, half-clothed, barefooted and ill-fed, among 
the bleak mountains of the Schuylkill — who could 
then forecast what changes should come to any or 
all of those lately brought into the circle of this 
narration, before the falling of the snows of the next 
season, through the thickening of the war-cloud 
enveloping the whole struggling land, and the roll- 
ing of its darkest shadows over that Flanders of the 
Revolutionary area, lying between the Delaware and 
the Hudson ? 


CHAPTER XII. 

PATRIOT BOAT-SERVICE AND HUYLER’o MEN. 

A SINGLE additional glance, but one ( f a certain 
importance, at events of the same time, occurring 
still farther distant from Valley Forge than even the 
plains of Monmouth. Within the Jersey county of 
that name, a portion of the scene ; though on the 
very verge, where the rough Raritan shore opened 
on the bay of that appellation, and where the yet 
rougher wooded Highlands of Navesink looked out 
on the stormy Atlantic. The remainder, on the op- 
posite side of the bay, so near to the city of New 
York as to be within the jurisdiction of the State 
of which if has always formed the commercial me- 
tropolis. 

Allusion has more than once been made already, 
to those marine guerrillas, of a class often much 
more difficult to combat than others engaged in reg- 
ular warfare ; and the connection with them of errant 
Tom Wayne, especially involving his fortunes in 
their action at this period, gives occasion to deal 
with those peculiar patriots somewhat more closely 
than heretofore. 

Reckoned by size of ships and weight of metal, 
the most daring exploits of the marine heroes of the 
Revolution must seem trifling to the men of the last 
decade, grown used to colossal cannon and yet more 
monstrous vessels ; and under such a view, the deeds 


Patriot Boat-Sennce. 105 

of John Paul Jones, of John Barry, of Richard Dale, 
of Joshua Barney, and the bravest and most active 
• of their compeers, ‘would seem little more than the 
works of pigmies, handling the toy-weapons of chil- 
dren, and cruising in vessels so diminutive as scarcely 
to have formed pinnaces for the iron-clad monsters 
of to-day. But such a view is not likely to be taken 
by the intelligent ; and no reader of the history of 
that warfare can fail to be struck by the effects, even 
disproportioned to the deeds as well as the means 
employed, produced by the frequent successes of the 
patriots in combating England on the element which 
she especially claimed as her own. Had this not 
been the case, scarcely would France have given 
sword and order, Russia an order, and Denmark an 
order and a pension, merely for even the fierce brav- 
ery of the hero of the Bonhomme Richard, who may, 
for the purposes of this suggestion, be taken as a 
type and pattern of all his brother commanders. 
The moral effect of success upon the sea, in favor 
of the nation struggling into birth, was infinitely 
greater than corresponding victory on the more 
stable element could by any means have achieved ; 
^ and let this fact not be forgotten, even in the glory 
of other heroes and in the overwhelming blaze of 
such achievements as those of the “ Great Admiral ” 
in the days now scarcely yet gone from us. 

But, to descend to yet another step, no small 
amount of good was done to the patriot cause, as no 
small amount of injury was inflicted on the royal, by 
the men who fought along the coasts, with even 
humbler vessels and even more trifling weapons 
than those winning the successes on blue water. 
Royal troops were thrown out of supplies, placed in 
5 * 


io6 The Spur of Monmouth, 

jeopardy, and often driven from the chance of im- 
portant operations, by the inconsiderable but harass- 
ing whale-boat, skiff, or batteau, and the adventurous 
surf-men who found equal pleasure and profit in 
making it a miniature man-of-war ; and in more than 
one instance advantageous positions were absolutely 
rendered untenable and abandoned, in the fear of 
foes weak in armament and contemptible in num- 
bers, but who possessed the power of coming un- 
expectedly and disappearing without the possibility 
of pursuit. 

Such operations in very small vessels — principally 
in row-boats, as more certain than sailing-boats to 
make rapid way under necessity — were by no means 
confined to any one locality ; every bay and harbor, 
and indeed every river of prominence, close to which 
lay any one of the theatres of conflict, being more or 
less haunted by these rivals of the mountain free- 
shooter. But the western end of Long Island Sound, 
as being near to New York, and the eastern, as com- 
manding one route to it and being also near New- 
port, New London and other places of strategic 
importance, naturally afforded more inducement for 
those coast-rovers, than places less favorably situ-, 
ated ; and the records yet extant, of operations car- 
ried on by the aid of the skiff and the oar, along 
those two lines, and by both the conflicting parties, 
would fill volumes with interest oddly blending the 
historical and the romantic. The boat expedition 
ending in the capture of the British General Pres- 
cott, in his head-quarters near Warwick, Rhode 
Island, by Colonel Barton, in Jul)^ 1777, had an 
appropriate revenge in the similar taking of the 
American General Silliman, at Fairfield, Connecticut, 


Patriot Boat- Service. 107 

by a boat party of loyalists from Long Island, in 
*7791 — that, an equally odd pendant in the car- 
r3dng off of the loyalist, Judge Jones, in a similar 
manner, from Fort Neck, near Oyster Bay, Long 
Island, in the fall of the same year, for the avowed 
purpose of making him a subject of exchange for 
the captured Silliman. 

Yet more extensively than at the eastern end of 
the Sound, however, was this description of warfare 
pursued in all the waters more closely surrounding 
New York, and especially on Raritan Bay and the 
rivers and creeks emptying into it, from New Bruns- 
wick and Amboy to the open sea at Sandy Hook, 
and thence down the coast to Egg Harbor and the 
Capes of the Delaware. And it was here, as already 
indicated, that Captain Adam Huyler, and his lieu- 
tenant and sometimes rival. Captain William Marri- 
ner, both originally men of the Middlesex shore, 
peformed their most daring deeds — often of suc- 
cess, but sometimes of failure or an incompleteness 
scarcely less galling. 

I'hey had a bright example, these men, be it said, 
inciting them to activity and enterprise. For no less 
a man than William Alexander, titular Earl of Stir- 
ling, and one of the bravest and noblest free-lances 
of his time, had set them the pattern in the taking 
of the British transport, the Blue Mountain Valley. 
in armed boats from Elizabethport, off Sandy Hook, 
late in 1775 or the beginning of 1776. Since taking 
up the trade, Huyler and his men had known many 
vicissitudes blended with no small number of tri- 
umphs — as indeed was their fate throughout the 
struggle. More than one of the Hessian and other 
commanders he had successfully surprised, from the 


io8 The spur of Monmouth, 

Long Island shore, sometimes making no contemp- 
tible capture of moneyed spoil in those operations ; 
though occasionally discomfited, as when (as tradi- 
tion affirms) he carried off the loyalist, Colonel Lott, 
from Flatbush, with what he believed to be two bags 
of guineas, the painful discovery following, at New 
Brunswick, that he had merely achieved two bags of 
half-pennies, belonging to the church collections of 
his neighborhood ! Not long before that January of 
1778, his boats had been burned by an armed force 
from New York, and himself and his companions 
only escaped capture by fleeing to the woods of 
Navesink. Little time had been necessary, how- 
ever, at the hands of the Jersey coastmen — half 
fishermen and half boat-builders, by profession — to 
repair the loss with new and larger boats, better 
armed and appointed ; and the midwinter of 1777-8 
saw him occupying the Cove within Sandy Hook, 
and occasionally the shores adjacent, burning with 
revenge against the destroyers of his former boats, 
and (perhaps the fact may as well be admitted, so 
often alleged against him) with fierce desire for 
some new adventure that might prove as profitable 
as patriotic ! 

Such opportunity seemed to have come to him, 
very nearly or quite at the same time when we have 
seen the half-ludicrous working of other guerrilla 
warfare in upper Monmouth, — and under circum- 
stances easily and briefly explained. For H. B. M. 
corvette, the Staghound, reported to have brought 
over large sums in treasure’ for the payment of the 
troops then occupying New York, after passing 
Sandy Hook two days previously, had anchored in 
Coney Island Bight (small bay) on the Long Island 


Patriot Boat- Service. “ 109 

shore, instead of entering the Narrows — her com- 
mander preferring, as there was every reason to be- 
lieve, landing his treasure at New Utrecht on Long 
Island, then fully in British possession, and trans- 
porting it under proper guard overland to Brooklyn 
and the city — rather than to enter within the Upper 
Bay, with possibility of difficulty in leaving it again, 
his orders being peremptory for the West Indies, the 
moment that he should have concluded the first part 
of his mission. In the thought of Captain Huyler, 
and, after due communication, also in the thought of 
his men, there was no absolute occasion of the cor- 
vette Staghound proceeding to the West Indies at 
all ; the sands of Romer being very well fitted for 
supplying a grave to that vessel, after being visited 
by his whale-boats, plundered of whatever might be 
valuable for other uses, and subjected to the cleans- 
ing fire of the pitch-pine torch. The corvette still 
lying in that position, visible from the heights of the 
Highlands, and yet more easily swept by the long 
glasses of the patriotic buccaneers — it was for the 
enterprise of capturing and destroying her that the 
whole force assembled at their rendezvous at Sperm- 
aceti Cove on the second night after the arrival, and 
when the young winter moon gave sufficient light 
for all earlier operations, without being likely to be- 
tray prematurely those later occurring. 

Few wilder scenes can well be imagined, than the 
Sandy Hook shore and its neighborhood, when Huy- 
ler’s Men gathered for that exploit. Dense cedar 
woods then clothed the whole extent of the Hook, 
as now they only clothe a small portion of it. Across 
the Cove, and beyond the channel of the Shrewsbury, 
the low shore was also wooded, quite as densely but 


110 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


with much more majestic growth, the dark line 
stretching away to the lofty woods and fastnesses of 
the Highlands — the last spot, by the bye, within the 
whole State which it seems to guard against the 
ocean, where enough of unbroken thicket remained 
to keep it a haunt of the red deer and the other wild 
game always fleeing before civilization, — and the 
last, south of the northern counties of the Hudson, 
to own a proprietor holding the quasi-feudal and 
ante-Revolutionary name of “the Patroon.” But 
though the woods rose darkly, far other was the 
general aspect of the landscape ; for the snow lay 
thickly along the whole line of coast, brightening 
every rod of cleared space, and carrying out the ap- 
parent shore far into the bay, on the ice forming an 
irregular border all around it. 

There was but little ice on the Hook shore proper, 
the set of the current breaking it up and carrying it 
away much sooner than from the opposite land ; and 
such had been the case throughout the winter, as 
during previous seasons. Seldom did the whale- 
boats, when unused drawn up beyond the reach of 
water and ice, need to be dragged, at that point, any 
considerable distance over the latter to reach the 
former ; though with their full manning and the 
strong arms of the adventurers, little objection could 
have been found even against such a necessity, ex- 
cept in the wearing out of valuable cedar and pine 
in keel and garboard. Always doubtful of long 
tenancy, in their own will or the will of others, Huy- 
ler’s Men, even at their favorite localities, made small 
pretense of the architectural ; and their “ lodge,” on 
the ice-bound shore at Spermaceti Cove, consisted of 
one immense hut of felled timbers, scarcely enough 


Patriot Boat- Service. 


Ill 


trimmed or shaped to be called logs, the filling in 
and the roof-thatching alike supplied by the great 
cedar-branches, and the carpentry of doors and win- 
dows (the latter guiltless of glass) being undeniably 
of the roughest. This single apartment was living- 
room, dining-room, sleeping-room, all rooms in one, 
to the hardy coastmen, whose many leisure hours 
were necessarily filled by conversations and amuse- 
ments the reverse of intellectual ; home-made cards 
of bonnet-board, with the spots done in ink or pen- 
cil, principally supplying what might be called the 
literary portion, except when for a time a lucky raid 
on hostile hamlet or enemy’s vessel afforded an 
interval of clean pasteboards gradually changing 
through all colors to black. Not ill-supplied in fare, 
during most of the time ; for fish were plentiful (as 
their belittling laureate suggests in his suppositi- 
tious song, it will be remembered), and there were few 
hands among them not capable of hauling the fisher- 
man’s line to advantage ; red deer were not scarce, 
in the thickets of the Highlands, and they were by 
no means deficient in marksmen ; and seldom was 
there an adventure that did not supply them with 
coveted potables, equal to any enjoyed by that Third 
George whom they believed themselves to be com- 
bating, in the shape of French brandies, or Hollands 
distilled on the soil governed by their High Mighti- 
nesses the States General. 

A wild and reckless set of men, beyond a doubt — 
those who for a time made their chief abode, when 
on shore, in the cedar-thatched hut standing in the 
identical spot (so much is known from the relations, 
long after, of those who then shared it) where now 
lie the iron rails and screams the locomotive carry- 


II2 


The Spur of Mo7t7?iouth, 


ing the summer pleasure-seekers to the breezy bluffs 
of Long Branch. A wild and reckless set of men, 
probably not too honest, nor too absorbingly patriotic 
at bottom — but brave as Paladins, hardy as back- 
woodsmen, and markedly useful in their day and gen- 
eration — those among whom vagabond Tom Wayne 
had temporarily cast his lot, and who assembled on 
that January night for their expedition against H. 
B. M.’s good corvette the StagJmmd, 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE NIGHT-ATTACK ON THE BRITISH CORVETTE. 

Eight o’clock, some two hours after the falling of 
dusk, and when the quarter-moon would yet remain 
long enough above the horizon to make easy the 
early dealings of the boatmen with the ice on the 
shore and the neighboring flats, had been named by 
Captain Huyler for the assembling of his full force at 
the Hook ; and at that hour such an assemblage was 
gathered within and in front of the cedar-covered 
hut, as might have been elsewhere sought in vain 
along the whole line of coast from Casco Bay to the 
Florida Keys. Some thirty in number, as each of 
the whale-boats was expected to carry ten or twelve 
able-bodied and well-armed men when on special 
service — they presented, as they waited impatiently 
without the hut, or sought to while away a half hour 
of delay within, a study of incongruity in dress, ap- 
pearance and manners, worthy of Salvator Rosa in 
his time, or one of the Vernets at a later. Of the 
incongruity of dress, it may be said that that quality 
did not do away with one uniformity — that of rough- 
ness ; as, whether the costume was of homespun or 
satinet, buckskin or the faded remains of what had 
once been broadcloth, it was always old, soiled, and 
bearing marks of severe service and active conflict. 
Long boots alternated with low shoes and even one 
or two pairs of moccasins ; battered hats, and caps 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


114 

iiade of the home-dressed skins of wild animals, 
made the heads of the singular group quite in keep- 
ing with their feet as to variety ; and in the faces of 
the adventurers, though they lacked that striking 
dissimilarity so inevitably imparted by varying style 
and length of beard at a later day, there was quite 
enough of half-frightening interest to have put 
Lavater upon his mettle and puzzled all the modern 
phrenologists. Many of those faces were rough as 
the costumes furnishing their setting — some gaunt, 
as if hunger had been their normal condition ; some 
ruddy enough to indicate full and frequent potations 
as a habit ; some with beetling brows, under which 
gleamed eyes sufficiently dangerous to have made 
the object of their regard involuntarily put hand to 
knife or pistol ; a few merry countenances, one glance 
at which showed that the owners were the pets of 
song and drinking-bout, ready for any fate as for any 
service, and little disposed to cavil at either; and 
here and there a face showing good culture and the 
habits of an easier life, enjoyed in those days when 
w’ar and all its train of evils had not yet fallen upon 
the land. To one of the latter faces, blending with 
this a lately named characteristic of another class, 
it is our duty to pay something more than mere 
cursory attention, as it was that of Tom Wayne, the 
dearly loved vagabond, perhaps at that very moment 
the subject of thought and anxiety in the old home 
so many miles away. 

Huyler’s Men were in waiting for their captain. 
There was yet a fire burning in the huge and un- 
wieldy old box stove that served at once for warmth 
and cookery, standing in the middle of the hut, with 
all the sides occupied by barrels, boxes — a row of 


Night- A Hack 07 i the British Corvette. 115 

boards on occasion forming a table when placed on 
the heads of two barrels ; and the “ bunks ” of straw, 
old sailcloth, dilapidated blankets, and everything 
capable of imparting the slightest warmth, at waking 
hours piled one on the top of the other, to be out- 
spread when the time should come for field-beds and 
general sleeping. On one of the boxes, not far from 
the stove, with a barrel between himself and a com- 
panion similarly seated, and the head of that barrel 
serving for a card-table, sat Tom Wayne, whiling 
the half-hour with a match at “ high-low-jack-and- 
game,” by the light of a sputtering candle, and play- 
ing it with that mixture of hasty recklessness and 
earnest skill which served to mark the two sides of 
his odd character. 

Scarcely taller than his sister Bessie — probably 
not more than five feet six to seven, Tom was al- 
most as handsome in his manhood as she in her full- 
ness of womanly beauty, while man)’- of the same 
characteristics showed in both faces. The face, al- 
most boyish in youth, was handsomely and even 
softly moulded, like hers ; the mouth had a corre- 
sponding power of setting itself, in shapes out of 
which it would not be easily moved ; and the dark 
curly head, so marked a contrast to the plain, straight 
hair of his sister, set almost as proudly as hers on 
broad and powerful shoulders; while the remainder 
of the figure showed strength and activity quite as 
plainly as hers the rounded perfection of womanly 
grace. But the eye was merrier than hers, by far, 
and the temperament much more reckless than hers 
could have been, with any change of sex to give it 
direction. He laughed often — almost too often 
and easily ; he sang, as some of his admirers asserted 


1 1 6 The Spur of Monmouth. 

(the well-to-do always have admirers among those 
whom they succor or tip) “ like a syrup ; ” he was an 
adept at athletic games as well as those ot skill ; 
and enough deeds of daring, during his short career 
among them, had come to the knowledge of his 
companions, to give him the epithet of “ Daredevil 
Tom ; ” while the fact that he took no share in any 
prize-money earned by the crew, was quite sufficient, 
of itself, to make him an object of distinguished con- 
sideration and a certain interested respectful regard. 

Damon seldom lives long without his Pythias, if no 
one of the softer sex supplies the vacant corner in 
his heart; and Tom Wayne had already his Pythias, 
accidentally come by and not long in his association. 
This was Walter Hartshorne, nephew of the then 
Patroon of Navesink, a boy of eighteen, with whom 
he had chanced to meet during one of his hunting 
excursions in the Highlands, and who had literally 
run away from home and gone in deadly opposition 
to what were believed to be the political sentiments 
of his family, to follow the fortunes of his new friend, 
and to meet dangers and achieve successes (like 
him, temporarily) in the boats and bivouacs of Huy- 
ler’s Men. The gloss of late respectability not yet 
quite worn from his clothing, the youngster was sit- 
ting, while his companion played, lounging upon a 
box, listlessly kicking his heels and unromantically 
whistling — a stripling in stature, light-haired, pleas- 
ant-faced, and looking much more fit for the civiliza- 
tion of a settlement than the hardships of half-out- 
lawed boat-service ; though possibly not one of all 
the number better enjoyed the hardships and the 
peril than he, as certainly no other looked forward 
with more impatience to the adventure of the night. 


Night- Attack on the British Corvette, 117 

Nothing has thus far been said of the arms of 
Huyler’s Men. This omission must be repaired ; and 
yet how shall it be done ? Probably never an olfen- 
sive body in all warfare, showed the same variety in 
armament, throwing the incongruity of their cloth- 
ing into the shade, and literally beggaring descrip- 
tion. It can not be said that any of them carried the 
crossbow of the Middle Ages, or even the matchlock 
or arquebus of the Parliamentary wars ; but scarcely 
any weapon of later date but had place in one hand 
or another. Here and there a long rifle — a few 
Queen Anne’s muskets — pistols of all ages, sizes 
and varieties — boarding-pikes — swords, dirks and 
cutlasses — with occasionally an ax or a hatchet, 
for purposes which may easily be imagined : such 
were the weapons of the quasi-buccaneers, seemingly 
always coming in play, and quite contenting those 
who bore them. 

Eight o’clock, as marked by one or two of the huge 
silver bullseye watches, carried in the fobs of those 
who chanced to own both conveniences. Eight 
o’clock ; and promptly with the hour there was a 
commotion at the door of the hut, and Captain Adam 
Huyler, who had thus far been absent on business 
beyond the ken of the others, strode into the assem- 
blage and attracted all regards in a moment, to the 
extent of even bringing Tom Wayne’s game to an 
abrupt close, at the moment when he had scored six 
an.d was in the act of turning Jack for a seventh ! 

Beyond doubt a marked man — this Captain Adam 
‘ Huyler, and quite capable of attracting the attention 
of others than his men. It was a day of no beards, 
‘ as most are aware — except when some man passed 
beyond the decency or the opportunity of the razor; 


ii8 The Spur of Mo7imouth. 

but the Middlesex boatman, of whom report held 
that he had for a time been something very different, 
owed no allegiance to the steel, and possibly found his 
account in the oddity. Short, thick-set and broad- 
shouldered, with legs bowed to the verge of deform- 
ity, he supplemented long, curling locks and bushy 
eyebrows by a full brown-and-grizzled beard, long, 
and curling like the hair, which he had acquired 
while some years absent at the South ; and, as his 
enemies asserted and some of his friends may have 
believed, while doing a little at piracy under one of 
the noted leaders of that service, among the Bahama 
Islands and on the Spanish main. Certain it is that, 
whatever his actual antecedents. Captain Huyler 
owed no little of his ascendency among his wild com- 
panions, and no little of the reputation for piracy, 
which he apparently equally endured and enjoyed, to 
this rare feature in personal appearance, to a bass 
voice hoarse enough to have belonged to Giant 
Blunderbore, and to a violence of temper and im- 
patience of contradiction, making him the feared 
leader, or nothing ! 

The captain, as he entered, wore long boots, a 
cocked hat of much age and shabbiness, a short coat 
of faded blue cloth, with one tarnished epaulet and a 
belt with pistols; and he was accompanied by his 
sometime lieutenant and occasional rival, William 
Marriner, whose personal description need not go 
beyond the fact that he was the antipodes of Huyler 
— long, lean and cadaverous, thin in flank and face, 
a shabby copy of the other in costume, except in the 
wearing of a Greek cap of many colors, and bearing 
no belt-weapons and no insignia of authority. 

At once, on this entrance, all was commotion in 


Night-Attack on the British Corvette. 119 

the group of adventurers* Orders were rapidly given 
by the commander, and as rapidly obeyed, as gener- 
ally are those appealing at once to feeling, fear and 
cupidity. All was already prepared for the embarka- 
tion ; and the three whale-boats, large and with 
pointed sterns, and the largest of the three with a 
small swivel mounted in the bow-sheets, had been 
drawn down to the very edge of the ice bounding the 
shore, in readiness for pushing off. A few moments, 
the boats were in the water, and, variously armed as 
they were, each was in his place on board, and the 
flag of the young nation, thirteen stripes of white 
and red, charged with a rattlesnake in full activity, 
unfurled from a short staff at the stern of the cap- 
tain’s boat, no doubt with some vague idea that it 
gave national character to the enterprise, though 
there was not much probability of its being con- 
spicuously seen in the coming darkness of the winter 
night. 

A long row and a tough one, was that, with six 
oars impelling each of the boats, from within Sandy 
Hook across the great shoal of Romer, past Coney 
Island Point and into the Bight formed by that head- 
land and the New Utrecht shore of Long Island. 
Romer was quiet, however, fortunately as to sea ; 
and the strong arms felt the long pull less painfully, 
in the wintry night-air, than they might have done un- 
der warmer conditions of atmosphere. Tom Wayne 
and his were in the second boat — that com- 
manded by Marriner; the former at the oar. and the 
latter near him and holding weapons. A long pull 
aj^d a sharp one. The moon had sunk behind Staten 
Island, making the night darker and seemingly cold- 
er, before they rounded the southwestern extremity 


120 


Ths Spur of Monmouth, 


of Coney Island and came near enough to their un- 
conscious prey to make out the dark hull and tall 
spars of the corvette, lying half-way between what is 
now Bath, of the summer bathing, and that part of 
Coney supplying wharfage to the steamboats of the 
cheap-pleasure-seekers. 

Thus far the attempt had been an entire success — 
as it was to be, to a certain extent, throughout. The 
order of attack had been arranged by the captain, 
before leaving the Hook, with that skill born of 
many such experiences. When within sight of the 
corvette, two of the boats were to board her from 
the Coney Island direction, however she might be 
found to be riding; and the third — that of Marriner 
— was ordered to make a considerable circuit, to- 
ward the Narrows, w'estward, and approach from the 
Long Island side, so as, at the moment of discovery, 
when that should be inevitable, to divide the atten- 
tion of the watch on deck, cause greater confusion 
in the impression of a combined attack, and prevent 
possible escape in the boats of the vessel, to the 
Long Island shore. At long past midnight, there 
was every possibility of all except the mere watch 
being below ; and the shelter of the bulwarks on a 
cold night could well be depended upon to prevent 
that look-out being over-vigilant, especially off a 
friendly shore, and with no foe believed to exist in 
the near vicinity. 

Most of these calculations proved correct. All 
would probably have done so, but for the fact that 
the captain of the corvette and some of his officers 
were attending a ball at New Utrecht, — and that 
two of the boats of that vessel, well manned and 
armed, were lying at the Long Island beach, ready 


Night- Attack on the British Coroette. 121 

to receive and convey them on board, on their return 
from the festivity. 

Thus it chanced that, the third boat, commanded 
by Marriner, having a somewhat longer^circuit to 
make than that described by the other iwo, that two 
first approached the side of the corvette, were dis- 
covered and the alarm given, too late to prevent 
boarding on the part of the determined adventurers, 
but in time to bring off to the rescue the two man- 
of-war’s boats from the shore, with a petty officer 
in charge. With so short a distance to row, they 
were at the side of the vessel before Marriner’s boat 
could reach it ; and a fight between the three boat's 
ensued, leading to the destruction of the whale-boat 
and the capture of so many of her crew as failed 
to escape to the other boats by swimming — the cor- 
vette’s boats being eventually obliged to make for 
the shore, when it became evident that their vessel 
was a prize, but carrying away with her no less than 
six of Huyler’s Men as prisoners. 

Among those who escaped to the other boats, was 
William Marriner, of whom it was often said from his 
spareness, that “ he had been spawned by a water- 
snake,” and who had the reputation of “diving 
deeper and staying longer under water,” than any 
other man of his time. But among those who did 
not escape, were poor Walter Hartshorne, wounded 
and thus rendered helpless in the first encounter of 
the boats — and his Damon — “Daredevil Tom 
Wayne,” who might easily have done so, had he been 
coward enough to leave the wounded youngster to 
his fate. So it was that while Captain Huyler, suc- 
cessful in his attack, but deprived of the aid of Mar- 
riner in making it, carried out his purpose, killed or 
6 


122 


The Spier of Monmouth, 


captured so many of those on board as did not man- 
age to throw themselves overboard and swim to the 
shore, while he plundered the vessel and set her on 
fire before leaving — so it was that while all this was 
being set down to the successful side of the enterprise 
account, there was/<?r contra one lost whale-boat, its 
arms and equipments, and Tom Wayne, his youngster 
protegiy and four others, borne away prisoners to 
the Long Island shore, and thence to New York and ^ 
that terrible confinement in the Sugar House, which 
seemed to have been located on Liberty Street with a 
special ironical eye to its subsequent uses. 

Whether Captain Adam Huyler and the remainder 
of his men, rowing more leisurely back across Romer 
toward Sandy Hook, in the gray light of the early 
winter dawn, at first considered themselves the win- 
ners or the losers in the expedition, we have no 
legendary ground to conjecture. Their loss was 
heavy, but much more heavy was that of the enemy. 
But there is sound tradition for the fact that at a 
certain point of that return voyage, the captain 
found no difficulty whatever in deciding as to what 
might have been the gain and loss of the transaction. 
It is asserted that he tore out some portions of his 
long beard by the roots, and horrified even his rough 
companions by the depth and sonorousness of his 
profanity. For one of the prisoners — a petty offi- 
cer — then and there told him, with a chuckle, and 
narrowly escaped going overboard as' a reward for 
the aggravating information, — that had he not been 
so hasty in setting fire to the corvette, he might 
have come upon some ten thousand pounds sterling, 
in good English gold, remaining on board for con- 
veyance to the West Indies ! 


CHAPTER XIV. 

AT SIR WILLIAM HOWE’S HEAD-QUARTERS. 

Three persons were sitting, on one of those Janu- 
*ary nights, before a blazing fire of oaken logs, sup- 
ported on huge ornamented brass andirons, in a large 
fireplace of fine brick-work with Dutch tiles glim- 
mering brightly on the jambs, — in an apartment of 
moderate size but considerable luxury in appoint- 
ment, standing on High Street not far from the 
corner of Sixth, in the good city of Philadelphia. 
That Philadelphia which the British commander be- 
lieved himself to have taken after his successes of 
the previous autumn, but which Franklin declared 
had “taken Howe himself,” quite as effectually as 
he could have been ensnared by defeat. 

The fine old house, of substantial stone, with a 
breadth of front permitting four windows on the 
second floor, and three and a door on the lower, 
had also dormer-windows at front and rear, and 
stood in a certain dignified isolation, a broad yard 
separating it from the next house on the right, and 
somewhat extensive planted grounds and gardens 
balancing that feature at the left. The abode w’as 
quite -worthy of its occupancy as the head-quarters 
of Sir William Howe, and the strongest of contrasts 
to the plain and sombre building (hereafter to be 
more closely noticed), supplying shelter to his Oppo- 
nent commander-in-chief, at desolate Valley Forge, 


124 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


— though by no means comparable to the luxurious- 
ness of that which became, for a brief and brilliant 
period, the quarters of the successor of Sir William 
in command — Sir Henry Clinton. 

The furnishing of this room was equally handsome 
and substantial: dark woods, upholstered in costly 
cloths and the finest of foreign leathers, supplying 
the material of chairs and lounges, the latter suffi- 
ciently numerous to indicate both wealth and indul- 
gent habits in those ordinarily occupying iL These 
conveniences, and a chair or two, were drawn com- 
fortably near the fire, so necessary in the sharp at- 
mosphere of the winter night ; and a little beyond 
them, and still near the fire, was a table covered 
with a rich cloth and bearing two or three maps, 
some books, decanters and goblets with wines, the 
remains of a fowl and some biscuits, as if a light re- 
past had lately been blended with business involving 
the use of the less physical materials. 

Extended half at length on one of the lounges, lay 
a man of something past fifty years, with a face 
clearly enough cut by nature, but a little full and 
heavy through good-living and moderate habits of 
indulgence. His head was covered by one of the 
queued wigs of the time, but without powder, and 
his person clothed in black velvet knee-breeches, 
silken hose, broad buckled shoes, a very richly em- 
broidered flapped waistcoat, and a colored dressing- 
gown with a trifle of fur showing at collar and lap- 
pets, in compliment to the season *at which it was 
intended to be worn. Marked ability, perhaps a little 
marred by the indecision belonging to good-nature, 
was visible in the face; while the position — with 
the thrown-up arms supporting the head — was that 


Sir William Hoive's Head-Quarters. 125 

of a man accustomed to ease and quite content in 
the enjoyment of it, wherever it chanced to be 
found. 

This was no less a person than Sir William Ilowe 
himself — the British commander-in-chief in America, 
and a scion of a somewhat remarkable race, in conflicts 
by land and sea, and in the singular inability to con- 
tinue any succession to honors very freely bestowed 
upon them by a grateful sovereign. Brother to that 
George, first Viscount Howe, who fell in the attaclc 
against the French at Ticonderoga in 1758, — and to 
that Edward, his successor to the title, who con- 
ferred so much distinction on the royal arms, not 
only during this war, but afterward in the West 
Indies and at Gibraltar, — Sir William had, at that 
time, little prospect of the title afterward to devolve 
upon him, in the Irish viscounty, which was to lapse 
through failure of succession, like all the other 
honors of the family. 

History has never yet been quite able to assign a 
place to this commander, who certainly possessed 
ability but never achieved decided results — who was 
by nature lenient, yet easily excited to something 
akin to ferocity — who was naturally active and ener- 
getic, yet falling into inactivity at the least tempta- 
tion — who fought so well during the campaign of 
1777, that the destruction of the patriot army at his 
hands seemed only a question of time, and yet, after- 
Germantown, allowed himself to be held literally 
captive in Philadelphia, by a much inferior force 
apparently quite within his reach — and who at last 
abandoned the field and went home to England at 
the moment when every dictate of policy would have 
seemed to call him to remain and conclude the work 


The Spur of M012 mouth. 


1 26 

which he could not but believe half accomplished. 
This same muse, history, however, has many such 
anomalies with whom to deal ; and it is no marvel if 
she often blunders in the record or folds her hands 
in despair. 

Opposite to Sir William, on another of the cush- 
ioned lounges, and at evident rivalry with him both 
in richness of costume and personal luxury, reclined 
Sir John Wrottesley, a tall and graceful man of fort3^ 
wigged like his commander, but with the dandyism 
of powder apparent, and showing somewhat too 
biuch of attention to his voluminous ruffles.* He was 
a favorite officer of Sir William, then on staff-duty, 
to which indeed he better belonged than to field ser- 
vice, his position in the army being to some extent 
that of a soldier-at-pleasure, with leave to continue 
his duty while he chose and discontinue it at any 
moment. A discreet adviser, in many instances. Sir 
John was yet one of those who contributed largely, 
by his personal action and manner, to that demorali- 
zation of the army and that inactivity of its com- 
mander, leading at last to the wild orgies of the later 
winter, to the insane follies of the Mischianza, and 
to that retreat across the Jerse3’’s which was un- 
doubtedly the turning-point of the struggle. 

The third person present was one to whom the 
fates were in one regard — that of his fame, and his 
place in the minds of men — as benevolent as they 
were severe in the violent cutting short of his physi- 
cal existence. For nothing rare beyond parallel, in 
the personality or the talents of John Andre, existed 
to make him, low in rank, and except in a single in- 
stance, insignificant in apparent employment, the 
lamented hero of the one arm3% pitied even while 


Sir Willia?n Howe's Head-Quarters. 


127 


slain by the other, and ever thereafter the subject of 
regretful song and story, with a grateful monument 
in Westminster Abbey to crown all. The service in 
which he came to his fate — the subornation of a 
treason so foul that his own nation revolted at it — 
was not one to awake respect, or to create pity for 
the victim ; for if Arnold was attainted through and 
through by the attempt to sell his place of trust for 
gold, and to ruin the country that had trusted him, 
even in the accomplishment of an angry revenge, 
certainly no man could be either tempter or agent 
in the procurement of that treason, without sharing 
some taint of the great crime. And that Andre, with 
an undoubted genius for intrigue, as became his 
peculiar blood, was the moving spirit in the tempta- 
tion of Arnold, and the active correspondent, for 
even a long time before the consummation, is now 
well known though long doubted. And yet from 
that fatal day of 1780, John Andre has been univer- 
sally rated as a hero — one over whom laments are to 
be sung, and the possibilities of whose after-life, then 
suddenly prevented, have been woven into a thou- 
sand glorious fancies. Youth, gallantry, a certain 
amount of talent — given these, then an overwhelm- 
ing misfortune, and the end of im.mortality is at- 
tained : ah ! how much more easily, when all is reck- 
oned, than that boon can ever come to those who 
labor and struggle for it, in the field, at the desk, in 
the cabinet ! 

Younger by more than twenty years than the com- 
mander-in-chief, and by nearly a dozen years than 
Colonel Wrotteslcy, besides being so far the inferior 
of both in rank, — it is not to be supposed that the 
young officer was holding a position of personal ease 


128 


The Spur of Afonmouth. 


at that meeting, corresponding with that of either of 
the others. On the contrary, though sitting, he was 
occupying one of the uncomfortable high-backed 
chairs at the table, showing a frank face, rather 
boyish than mature, and by no means strikingly 
handsome though interesting — the nose short; the 
head markedly square, as seen in profile ; the natu- 
ral hair swept back and queued ; and the uniform 
that of his rank — a captain in the Twenty-sixth 
Regiment of infantry — though with a certain amount 
of care in costume, suggesting social life and fashion, 
and the habitual company of those above -him in 
rank. 

Such favoritisms are quite as unexplainable as the 
whims and fortunes of reputation, already referred 
to in this connection ; and many believed that a 
marked personal magnetism was the explanation of 
that influence which led Sir William Howe to make a 
Sequent and trusted adviser of one so much younger 
than himself, so comparatively humble in rank, and 
in his French-Swiss Genevan blood debarred any 
advantage that might have accrued from even dis- 
tant connection with powerful families at home. Yet 
that Sir William was not even alone in bowing to the 
strange influence of the young man, is evidenced by 
the fact that he stood yet more closely, later, to Sir 
Henry Clinton, rose in rank, and became the adju- 
tant-general of the army in America, before coming 
to his early death of blended shame and glory. 

It scarcely needed the maps and military books 
lying on the table, conjoined with the presence of 
Captain Andre, to make sure that some conversation 
had lately been in progress, with reference to the past 
campaign or some movement to follow ; and even at 


Sir William Howe's Head- Quarters . 129 

the moment when attention is called to the group, 
Sir William was concluding some mortified specula- 
tions in which he had been indulging, with reference 
to the unsuccessful attempt to surprise the patriot 
troops at Whitemarsh, a little more than a month 
previously (really on the night of the 3d-4th of De- 
cember, 1777). It is possible that in connection 
with the subject he had betrayed his chagrin by a 
few words of violence — not to call them curses — 
directed at some person or persons unknown ; for he 
concluded with a threat, though without removing 
his hands from beneath his head to enforce it by 
gesture : 

“ I have not been so thoroughly shamed, to have 
any report go home since my coming, as the bulletin 
of that cursed afifair ! And mark me, gentlemen, if I 
live, and remain in command of his Majesty’s forces 
in America, I will ferret out that mystery, for mys- 
tery there is — and woe to the traitor if I lay hands 
on him ! ” 

“Humph!” said Sir John Wrottesley, with no 
vehemence and even in a tone of drawling banter. 
“ You do well. Sir William, to insist on him ; for you 
might not be so free to vent your vengeance, should 
it chance to be her ! ” 

“Eh? What mean you. Sir John?” and the com- 
mander half rose from his reclining position to catch 
a closer view of the countenance of the other. “ Why 
that w^ord, her? By the Lord, it half tallied with some 
of my ow'n fancies ! Is there anything, not told, that 
you. know, or even guess, with reference to it? ” 

“ I, Sir William ? Certainly not ! ” laughed Sir 
John ; and the general dropped back on his lounge, 
with a half-uttered “Pshaw!” of impatience. “ In- 
6 * 


I JO The Sptir of Monmouth. 

deed, you should be the last to ask such a question. 
Was there ever anything that I knew, not told, if my 
pleasant friends, who are always abusing me, are to 
be credited ? No, Sir William ; you may be sure that 
I know nothing beyond what I have already ex- 
plained in full ; and yet I quite agree with you that 
there was treachery somewhere, and treachery that 
should be discovered and punished.” 

“ Could Luttrell have been mistaken ? Could there 
have been some one astir and within hearing, at that 
confounded ‘ Loxley’s House,’ as they call it ? I have 
more, than half suspected, and that her of yours. Sir 
John, is like a prick in an old wound. I need scarcely 
ask you. Captain Andre,” the commander continued, 
directing his gaze toward the subordinate at the 
table, “whether you believe the investigation to 
have been searching and thorough, as you had my 
special charge to sift it to the bottom ? ” 

“ I know nothing more, and guess nothing more, 
Sir William, than what I have already had the honor 
to communicate,” replied Andre, laying down his 
book. '“The conversations, so far as we can learn, 
were very carefully held ; and the only person within 
the house at the time of the delivery of your orders, 
who could possibly have been false and had brains 
enough to be so to the extent of any harm — I mean 
the woman Darrah, — was so soundly asleep after the 
fatigues of a day with her women at the wash-tubs, 
that they were nearly obliged to knock down the 
house to awake her when they wished,” 

“ Humph ! That would be a trifle suspicious, under 
some circumstances : people who sleep too soundly, 
may have a motive for doing so ! ” suggested Sir 
John. 


Sir William Howe's Head- Quarters. 13 1 

“True,” echoed Sir William. “But then — oh, 
Luttrejl must have known what he was doing ! If I 
thought otherwise — if I had good reason to believe 
that that woman had cost me such a three days’ bout 
in the snow, and possibly prevented my destroying 
the whole rebel rout — by the Lord I would burn the 
house over her head, as I would smoke out a rat, and 
take good care that she roasted in the thickest of it. 
I learned a little of that art of ‘smoking,’ by the way, 
Sir John, as probably you know, when I was lieu- 
tenant-colonel of Anstruther’s regiment, the Fifty- 
eighth, under Amherst, in the old French war on the 
Canada lines ; and it might be well to try my hand 
again.” 

Well was it for Lydia Darrah, almost unknown 
heroine of that momentous period of the struggle, 
who did on that occasion overhear the orders for the 
night-attack on Washington’s encampfnent at White- 
marsh, who feigned sleep to prevent suspicion of her 
overhearing, and who then trudged on foot through 
the snow, not less than five or six miles, to Frank- 
ford and the skirts of the patriot camp, to give the 
warning which frustrated the whole design and sent 
back the attacking force, foiled, and “ like a parcel 
of fools,” as their officers declared — well was it for 
Lydia Darrah, and for the staunch, odd-looking old 
“ Loxley’s House ” that stood until within the mem- 
ory of the present generation, on South Second 
Street, not far from Pine, its shape always suggest- 
ing an antique school-house, and the queer gallery 
in front telling of the preaching of Whitefield that 
had often resounded there — well was it for matron 
and mansion that Sir William, who would so certainly 
have been true to his word in that instance, placed 


132 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


confidence in Luttrell and allowed the misfortune of 
the past to be dwarfed by the designs of the present 
and the anxieties of the future ! 

“At all events,” added the commander, after a 
pause which allowed his momentarily ruffled temper 
to become placid again, “the Schuylkill is no better 
defense than the Wissahickon ; and what has once 
only been half done may be thoroughly done at last. 
I have the opinion of most of my officers, it would 
seem, in opposition to any movement against the 
rebels while holding their present position. And yet 
I believe the opinion folly, and that the opportunity 
to sweep away those ragged beggars at once and fin- 
ally, was never so good as at the present moment.” 

“You know my opinion already, Sir William, and 
have not asked for any repetition of it — else I should 
give it,” very calmly replied Sir John. Then, after a 
moment continuing, as neither of the others spoke: 
“They are ragged and freezing — true ; let them use 
up the small remainder of clothing that they own, 
and freeze entirely, not to mention starving as a 
pleasant assistance in the finish. We have not too 
much of provisions, but we have enough, while we 
remain here and do not waste them in marching to 
fight windmills. It is now the middle of January ; 
they can not move except to more immediate de- 
struction, before the middle of March, at the earliest. 
If one-third of the force with which they are credited, 
is alive and has not run away by that time — while 
your own forces. Sir William, will have been compar- 
atively recruiting themselves in their comfortable 
quarters here — why, then drum me out of the ser- 
vice as too great a fool to wear his Majesty’s uni- 
form. That is my opinion, a little more fully ex- 


Sir ]Vivaa>n Howe's Head- Quarters. 133 

pressed than before, and yet with all deference to the 
supreme judgment of the commander-in-chief.” 

Sir William Howe made no reply at the moment — 
evidently deep in thought, displeased, if quite con- 
vinced. And amid that silence, there fell from the 
lips of the younger officer the first of certain words 
destined to exercise the sti^ongest influence on the 
event of the struggle, at'the same time that they 
evidenced something more of the as yet only half 
understood Machiavellian character of the man who 
was at last to perish in fully developing it. Al- 
most beyond question, those words were the means 
of deciding Sir William against the one blow which 
all policy at that juncture required him to strike, 
when his enemy lay so near, so helpless, and for the 
time so fatally divided. For it must be believed that 
that blow which the well-appointed thirty thousand 
of the ro5'^al troops would have been able to deliver 
against the eleven thousand suflering and ill-ap- 
pointed of the patriots, must have broken the last 
bond of union toward the one man who stood as 
their safety, if it had not crippled the little army al- 
most to the necessity of dispersion. 

“ If you will pardon my presumption. Sir William,” 
Andre said, “and not ask me for particulars that are 
not yet ripe for producing, I shall feel it my duty to say 
that there is another ally fighting for his Majesty’s 
cause at Valley Forge, and in some other places 
that need not be named, quite as powerful as cold 
and hunger.” 

“You mean quarrels among the rebels themselves. 
Captain Andre the commander inquired. “And 
if so. why should not that very fact be an argument 
for attacking a force adding dissension to its other 


134 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


elements of weakness? Tliat can not be one of the 
questions, I think, not ripe for an answer!” 

“ By no means, Sir William,” the young officer re- 
plied, pausing only a moment before making his calm 
response. “ Under any ordinary circumstances, your 
inference would be conclusive, as, under submission, 
it is not now. Sir John has said what he believed 
would be the case before the middle of March : I 
have every reason to believe, almost to know,” and 
here his voice fell lower, as that of one dealing with 
matters of the utmost secrecy ; “ that before the mid- 
dle of February, Washington will be superseded in the 
commaitd of what he calls his army, if they are quietly 
allowed to starve and freeze, and are not stopped by 
some employment that we give them, from their fav- 
orite amusement of plotting.” 

A prolonged “ Phew ! ” of surprise was the suffi- 
cient comment on this startling announcement, from 
the lips of Sir John Wrottesley ; but there was enough 
of force in it to startle Sir William Howe from his 
lounge, to make him toss off a glass of wine at a 
gulp, and ask in a tone of agitated interest : 

“In w'hose favor, in God’s name? Or is that one 
of the questions that must not be answered? ” 

“ Not at all. Sir William. In favor of one or the 
other of those two puissant commanders — Gates or 
Charles Lee, with a bare possibility of Conway.” 

A second “ Phew ! ” even more prolonged than the 
other, came from Sir John, still retaining his lounge ; 
and Sir William’s comment, as he strode two or three 
times up and down the room, should have been heard 
not only at Valley Forge but in the circumscribed 
halls of the Congress at Lancaster: 

“ By the Lord, this is refreshing, indeed ! Gates, 


Sir JVi//iam Howe's Head- Quarters. 


135 


who believes that he took Burgoyne, when he would 
have been cut to pieces but for Schuyler ! Charles 
Lee, a second edition of Dalgetty, and too ill-tempered 
to command even a troop of horse ! And Conway 
— of the Nose ! But we will leave out Conway — eh. 
Sir John! — either of the others will serve the pur- 
pose admirably ! Make me sure of what you have 
hinted. Captain Andre, and the day that you do so, a 
major’s brevet is at your service, and a major’s com- 
mission if my good word goes for anything ! ” 

“As a faithful servant of his Majesty’s, Sir Wil- 
liam,” replied the young officer, in a voice very grave 
and earnest, and with something like a shudder pass- 
ing over his frame, that both the elders afterward 
remembered with feelings akin to that very emotion ; 
“you may depend upon my doing the little within 
my power, to remove the present commander, in 
whom, for some cause or other, I do not place implicit 
confidence, from the head of the rebel army.” 

It is just possible that Sir William Howe may have 
been suspicious, before that hour, of secrets, and even 
commissions, in the keeping of his subordinate, ema- 
nating from authority equally high with that which 
gave him his own high charge, and not to be inquired 
into too closely, even by a commander-in-chief. It 
is even possible that in some such knowledge or sus- 
picion, rendered all the more plausible by the blood 
of a race of native intrigue, which Andre inherited, 
both Sir William and. Sir Henry Clinton may have 
found reason for that confidence so certainly reposed 
in him, and already referred to as a historical prob- 
lem. Certain it is that, on that occasion, the reply 
just made seemed to the commander to contain 
much more than had been spoken, and that he made 


136 


The -Spur of Alorunoiiih, 


no response other than an expression of high satis- 
faction, also evident in his clearing brow and almost 
jubilant manner. 

“Gentlemen, join me, in a glass!” he said, more 
gayly than he had before spoken word that evening. 
“No — let it be a bumper! I give you, gentlemen, 
the downfall of that bad management which has so 
long crippled the rebel army, and the coming of that 
new and vigorous command of — by the Lord, the 
idea is magnificent 1 — Gates, Lee, or even Conway ! ” 


CHAPTER XV. 

VALLEY FORGE, AND EVENTS PRECEDING. 

At last to return to Valley Forge and its neigh- 
borhood, after a much longer absence than originally 
intended — as is the experience of most of those 
who in life or literature venture to depart upon what 
they believe to be short journeys. To Valley Forge, 
with a brief restwie preceding the return proper — 
grouping hastily the events of the war for the few 
months previous to the encampment there, the min- 
gled policy and necessity leading to the selection of 
that spot as the place of permanent winter-quarters 
of the patriots, and the situation in which they ne- 
cessarily there found themselves. That situation, it 
should be said, lingered long in the memory of those 
who shared in its hardships and perils, and formed 
the theme of many a personal relation, out of which, 
through the lapse of nearly half a century since 
their utterance, has been preserved much of the 
material for this desultory chronicle. 

From the occupation of the city of New York by 
the British, on the fifteenth of September, 1776, after 
the disastrous battle of Long Island during the clos- 
ing days of August, it is doubtful whether Washing- 
ton was not fully aware of the impossibility of re- 
covering that first city of the continent, until, if 
ever, the royal power should be finally broken in 
America. There still remained to the patriots a great 


138 The Spur of Monmouth. 

city of the Middle States, however, in Philadelphia, 
which possessed the additional prestige of being the 
spot where the Declaration (;f Independence had 
been given to the world, which thus far supplied a 
capital to the young and struggling confederacy, and 
which had the advantage of finer agricultural sur- 
roundings, promising material for the continuous 
support of an army, than New York or any other 
centre of population. To hold Philadelphia, then, 
was undoubtedly his great object, scarcely dwarfed 
by the other grand motive of thwarting the evident 
purpose of the royal commanders to cut the confed- 
eracy apart — so to speak — by isolating New Eng- 
land and New York from the South, placing their 
chief force in the centre (obviously in New Jersey 
or Pennsylvania), and thus being free to deliver 
their blows on one hand or the other as might seem 
politic. To retain Philadelphia was, indeed, part of 
Washington’s plan to defeat that division ; and in 
the light of such an understanding, most of his mili- 
tary operations following the abandonment of New 
York in 1776, may be read to advantage. That his 
selection of Morristown as the winter-quarters of 
1776-7, had in view a quick defense of Philadelphia 
at need, while still keeping as near as possible to 
the line of the Hudson, is beyond question ; and 
that he believed himself, in the brilliant fights of 
Trenton and Princeton, preceding that encampment, 
to have saved the capital at least for the time, is 
equally clear. 

The summer of 1777 saw some brightening pros- 
pects for the patriot arms, in the success of Ben- 
nington, and the serious checks to Burgoyne pour- 
ing down his forces upon Northern New York from 


Valley Forge^ and Ev€7its Pirceding. 


39 


Canada, and endeavoring to bring about at least that 
portion of the British plan consisting in cutting off 
New England from the remaining hostile area. But 
the exertions made by the patriots to repel the 
Northern invasion had drawn heavily upon any 
power to aid the central force, that might otherwise 
have existed. Owing to the mingled meanness and 
misunderstanding of Congress, money for the army 
uses was almost unattainable ; the country from 
which the patriot troops derived their support was 
fast becoming drained of the power of sustaining 
large bodies even capable of paying for subsistence, 
as they were not ; and long before the first frosts of 
the autumn of 1777, the commander-in-chief had the 
pain of seeing his followers half-clothed, ill-fed, 
dwindling rapidly in numbers, and falling into that 
dissatisfaction alike with their management and their 
prospects of eventual success, inevitable under such 
circumstances, when conjoined with the efforts of 
scheming adventurers to mislead the discouraged and 
inflame the intractable. 

Still holding the hope of saving Philadelphia, it 
must have been nevertheless a shadowy one, with 
which, when aware that the fleet of Lord Howe was 
bringing eighteen thousand men up the Delaware to 
attack that city, Washington turned to strike a last 
blow for its defense, at Brandywine, below Chester, 
and near the State line of Delaware, on the eleventh 
of September. Albeit not with heavy loss, he was 
defeated at Chadd’s Ford, decidedly enough to prove 
the impossibility of his weakened force standing be- 
fore the augmented British one, in any open field, 
and with the wounding of Lafayette throwing a 
gloom over his councils. Fie fell back upon Phila- 


140 


The Spur of ATonmouth. 


delphia, merely to pass through it, indeed, before 
the advance of Sir William Howe — unwilling to risk 
another battle, and possibly, in so doing, to allow 
the British, if successful, to get between his own 
force and the deposit of military stores at Reading. 
Abandoning the city, Washington fell back upon the 
highlands of the Schuylkill, some dozen miles above 
Germantown ; while the Congress, driven from their 
temporary capital, removed with the archives of the 
young nation to Lancaster, thus throwing themselves 
and the magazines into the same line of interior 
protection. 

The attack upon the British forces, just forming 
their camps at Germantown, on the fourth of Octo- 
ber, was scarcely intended by the commander-in- 
chief as anything more than a skirmish, to harass 
the victors, and keep alive the fighting spirits of his 
army, though the result was more disastrous than 
could have been calculated upon — Chew’s House 
playing the same fatal part in favor of the royal 
troops, so long after played by La Haye Sainte and 
Hoguemont in favor of the successors of some of 
these very regiments, at Waterloo. If any proof of 
the fnferiority of his force in weight, had been 
needed by Washington, he found that proof at Ger- 
mantown ; and any hope of preventing the British 
wintering in Philadelphia, was thenceforth idle. 
Sadly, while the royal camp was removed to the 
city, the Americans fell back again to the line of the 
Schuylkill, at Perkiomen and Skippack : how much 
more sadly than they might have received their re- 
verse, had the day of rapid intelligence come to 
them as it came to the watchers for the events of 
Solferino and Wissembourg — had they known that 


Valley Forge ^ and Events Frcceding. 14 1 

even then Gates held Burgoyne beleaguered beyond 
escape, at Saratoga, and that in a few days thereafter 
that commander and his troops would be prisoners 
of war, with the great northern expedition at an end 
and finally ! 

Among the hills bordering the Schuylkill, at 
Whitemarsh, on the Wissahickon, some twenty miles 
from Philadelphia, the patriot army “hutted,” if 
they, could not be said to go into winter-quarters 
when probably the commander considered himself 
likely to move at any moment. There it was that 
they remained, with the most wretched of accommo- 
dations, until after the repelled attack of Howe, on 
the 3d-4th of December (already noted) ; and per- 
haps the fact that they could be so easily attacked 
there, may have been a conclusive reason in the 
mind of the new Fabius, for deciding what a council 
of his officers failed to bring to a decision, and se- 
lecting Valley Forge as the spot for winter encamp- 
ment. 

It was well on in December, with the snows of a 
bitter season lying thick on every hand, and the 
Schuylkill and its tributaries sealed with ice that 
would not leave them before the coming of spring, 
that this removal was effected, with a celerity puz- 
zling calculation, and an order wonderful under all 
the circumstances ; and the middle of that month 
saw them across the Schuylkill, erecting at Valley 
Forge, only a few miles more distant from Philadel- 
phia than had been their old quarters at White- 
marsh, those rude fortifications intended to defend 
them from any attack less determined than a regular 
investment, and those hasty huts and other miserable 
shelterings against the rigor of the season, upon 


142 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


which they must depend, under God, for seeing as 
an army the coming of another spring — indeed, for 
escaping the death of freezing and famine threaten- 
ing them every hour. 

Valley Forge ! Name sacred to those severest 
throes of agony and anxiety which gave the actual 
birth of a nation! Name, fortunately musical as 
Bunker Hill is the reverse, and that can ring on the 
tongue with pleasure as well as admiration. There 
it was that, as in the olden time in the wilder scenes 
of Scotland, Switzerland and the Tyrol : 

“ In the mountain passes, lone and cold, 

The life of freedom kept its only hold.” 

There it was that, without tents, an army dared the 
depth of winter with huts of logs and branches, and 
in some instances burrows in the earth. There it 
was that thousands tracked the midwinter snow with 
shoeless and bloody feet ; that sentries shivered in 
rags tied about them with other rags, girt with ropes, 
or fastened with pins of wood or thorn ; that hunger 
almost never varied, but to become starvation ; that 
strong men became so enfeebled as to demand the 
excusing of no less than three thousand from parade 
at one time, as too weak even for that exercise of 
discipline ; that disease was combated without medi- 
cine, and almost without nursing or attention, the 
mortality only less fearful than its probabilities ; 
that a people struggling to be free were tried in the 
very furnace flame of danger, want and misery, and 
emerged with the fiat from on high : “Worthy !” 

For there, too — there it was that Washington 
watched over his weakening and afflicted army with 
the care of a father and the tenderness of a brother 


143 


Valley Forge ^ and Events Preceding. 

— doing all that he could do, sorrowing for what he 
could not — supplying that with which no body of 
men is quite desolate, and without which any body 
must become a mere dangerous mob in the end ; a 
Head ! There it was that Lafayette, fresh from the 
gayety and plenty of the French court, and full of 
the desire to aid a cause which he loved because it 
was that of the weaker party, learned some of those 
lessons in the strategy of war which afterward 
tended to make him (so far as he could be allowed to 
go) a second Washington in his own distracted land, 
and where there is no doubt that he imbibed some of 
those principles of endurance under wrong which 
stood him in good stead before the blasts of the 
National Convention and in the prison cells of OI- 
mutz — some of those creeds of patience and pitying 
mercy which made him so safe a counselor aga’inst 
the Red Cap and the Reign of Terror, when the des- 
tinies of a nation lay literally in his hands. There it 
was that Baron Steuben, covered with glory and 
starred with decorations for his valor in the service 
of the great Frederick, led out those awkward but 
still more pitiful squads of the untrained, on those 
bleak heights of the Valley Creek, taught them to 
be men in arms, and laid the foundation of a disci- 
pline never yet entirely forgotten. There it was, 
that one and another of the minor chiefs of the little 
patriot army, seemed to be passing through precisely 
that schooling of adversity and resource, necessary 
to make them the able commanders which many of 
them afterward became. And there it was, alas ! 
(as there will be too close occasion to discover, in 
this near connection) that some of those, previously 
high ih the confidence and respect of the command- 


144 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

er-in-chief, and who had thus far, to use the favorite 
phrase of the republican French, deserved well of 
their country — found occasion for plots and cabals, 
the success of which must have been the destruction 
of the national hopes, and the failure of which, with 
this partial detection involved, laid them thereafter 
under the watchful and dangerous observation of an 
eye not often twice deceived in the objects of its 
vision. 

It has already been said that the selection of Val- 
ley Forge as the spot for winter-quarters, was the 
personal decision of Washington, without any posi- 
tive '’dvice in that direction from his officers. That, 
foi-'^ , j4e purposes necessary to be subserved, the 
scLr g ^n was an admirable one, there can not be a 
dou;./,' even without reckoning the dictum of the 
Prussian conqueror, who for this winter campaign 
and the one preceding it, gave the American the 
highest praise he had ever been known to bestow 
upon any ■ commander. Though not much farther 
from the hostile force at Philadelphia, than had been 
the encampment at Whitemarsh, Valley Forge, be- 
sides being more nearly than the other in a position 
to cover Lancaster and the safety of Congress, pre- 
sented obstacles against any surprise on the part of 
the enemy, in the difficulty of approach across coun- 
try or up the frozen Schuylkill, likely to cause the 
very hesitation which they did indeed produce, and 
thus to give the broken army the best possible 
chance for comparative quiet and the physical bene- 
fits thence to be derived. 

To those who have never traversed the chief bat- 
tle-fields and encampments of the Revolution, it 
may be interesting better to understand the topog- 


145 


Valley Forge^ and Events Preceding. 

raphy of the spot than they are otherwise likely to 
do. Valley Forge, then the merest of hamlets (even 
now little more), on the spot where Isaac Potts had 
so long before erected that forge giving it name — 
lay on the south side of the Schuylkill, in a south- 
erly bend of that river, at the point where it was 
entered by a small but turbulent stream known as 
the Valley Creek, the latter descending northward 
to the river, through the gorge between two lines of 
lofty and rugged wooded heights, known as the Val- 
ley Creek Hills, extending back for some miles lat- 
erally from the river, and only ending near its 
verge. All the southern bank of the Schuylkih -r 
a considerable distance, was high and rugged ,r t; i- 
ing no mean advantage in temporary fortific • • 

that advantage being fully used, in the clean: . xU 

timber of the tops of the whole range on the v .xSt of 
the creek, for something like two miles in either di- 
rection, and the covering of them with ordinary 
earth-works, with batteries at intervals, offering very 
serious threats against hostile approach, at the same 
time that those heights commanded full view over 
the line of the Schuylkill, the flat country beyond, 
and every course of possible advance from below.' 
On the very bank of the river, in the nook formed by 
the junction of the creek, stood the house supplying 
the quarters of the commander-in-chief. Two or 
three hundred yards higher up the creek, over a 
stone bridge ran the road between the King of.Prus- 
sia tavern, four miles eastward, and a larger hamlet 
now known as Phenixville, about an equal distance 
westward. 

One disadvantage, to counterbalance many of its 
opposites, naturally beset Washington in making the 

7 


146 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


selection of Valley Forge; but it might have been 
difficult in many other quarters at that special time, 
to avoid the same disadvantage. This was found in 
the loyalist character of the population — a part of 
it, no doubt, the result of the Quaker and anti-war 
influence before adduced, but the whole of it painful 
as well as embarrassing to the defender of the coun- 
try against a superior foreign power. Whatever was 
the case in twice-trodden New Jersey, the resources 
of Pennsylvania in food had been by no means ex- 
hausted ; and while the patriot troops lay at the verge 
of starvation, the products of many farms were kept 
concealed, or at least not brought forward, until the 
chief ?'cting under the dictatorial authority a second 
time ;stowed upon him by Congress in the emer- 
gent, ®'f Sir William Howe’s advance, issued peremp- 
tory orders for the threshing and forwarding of all 
grain within fifty miles on either side, to be paid for 
when delivered, but the penalty of disobedience 
being the seizure of the grain wherever found after 
a named date, at the bagatelle price allowed for 
straw ! Apart from the additional suffering to the 
patriots, entailed by the withholding of those food- 
products of the country which might have at least 
relieved their hunger in some degree, was to be 
reckoned the additional danger of a position sur- 
rounded by influences the reverse of friendly, even 
if not actively hostile ; and in any relation of the 
events connected with the region during that mo- 
mentous winter, that special detail of the situation 
must not be ignored or overlooked. 

Such, hastily limned, was the national situation in 
the Middle States, with that in New England and 
again in the South showing corresponding features 


Valley Forge ^ a fid Events Preceding. 147 

to invite hope and provoke discouragement ; and 
such, especially, was the position of the patriot army 
at Valley Forge, — at that January time of 1778, 
when the events already recorded in earlier chapters 
were occurring there and elsewhere, preceding and 
rendering necessary those, affecting the fortunes of 
the characters principally involved, which are now 
to be traced with due diligence. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

CAPTAIN ANSTRUTHER’S DOCUMENTS. 

“Not to-morrow night — no; let it be the evening 
of the second day from the present,” had been the 
words of Catharine Trafford, on the night of the 13th 
January, arranging with Colonel George Vernon for 
that second interview in which he was to learn from 
her those names of the leaders of the cabal against 
the commander-in-chief, so important to be known 
in the interest of defeating their machinations. 
“ Not to-morrow night — no;” little had the patriot 
officer guessed, of the impossibility of the next 
night being chosen — of the all-powerful reasons 
why some time later than that should be set for the 
conference ! That, had he known, his purpose and 
action might have been changed, is possibly too 
much to say ; but that, had he known all that the 
arrangement involved, he might have found himself 
plunged seriously into doubt as to the strict line of 
his duty, when he rode that night back to the en- 
campment at Valley Forge, is among the absolute 
certainties. 

For, twenty-four hours later than his visit, it be- 
came evident that Catharine Trafford was in the habit 
of receiving other visitors at Cedar Grove — that 
she could even be allowed to converse apart with at 
least one of them, without any suspicion of impro- 
priety existing on the part of the careful Quaker, 


Captahi Ajisinitho^s Domme 7 its. 149 

Ephraim Reed. Nay, strong reason seemed to exist 
for believing that she actually had an appointment 
for the evening of the 14th, with a gentleman young 
enough and handsome enough to involve the sus- 
picion of a love-tryst, but that the time seemed 
out of joint, in that troubled section, for indulgence 
in any of what could be called the softer follies. 
And if so, how fortunate was it that Colonel Ver- 
non had chosen that special evening for his con- 
ference, instead of the one following — how awkward 
might it have been, had that confidential member of 
the military family of the commander-in-chief, hap- 
pened to visit Cedar Grove at the same identical 
hour with the other expected ! History, indeed, 
might have borne different marks on some of its 
broad pages, had the rencontre thus suggested actu- 
ally occurred ; careers would have been turned in a 
different direction from those which they really pur- 
sued ; sonie of them might even have closed quickly 
and suddenly, instead of going on to the destined 
end. 

It was perhaps nine o’clock on that second even- 
ing, when some of the occurrences of the preceding 
were repeated. It was again a horseman who ar- 
rived — as, indeed, for any considerable distance no 
other mode of travel than that by the saddle would 
have been possible. There was again a horse left 
behind in the shelter of the outhouses ; but this 
time without any attendant to look to the safety or 
comfort of the animal. There was another step 
coming up the trodden path from the gate, though 
not through storm, the early part of the day having 
exhausted the gale and snowfall of the previous 
night, leaving the air additionally cold, and the broad 


The Spur of Momnouth. 


150 

sheet of white covering the landscape a trifle thicker 
and purer than before. 'There was another figure at 
the door, the new-comer stamping off the snow from 
his feet, a little less energetically than his predeces- 
sor. 

But there was no surprise, in this instance. For 
though Ephraim Reed, for anything appearing to 
the contrary, might have been reading in the same 
book and at the same page as those of the preceding 
evening — and though Hannah Reed had either made 
no progress in the stocking under her hand, or fin- 
ished one and begun another within the twenty-four 
hours, — the third occupant of the room was not en- 
gaged at her embroidery, but standing at the window, 
when the figure came into view — the curtain raised 
a trifle, and the lady looking out at the night as if in 
expectancy. 

A single tap of the knocker, and Catharine Traf- 
ford opened the door at once, merely saying to the 
Quaker, who was about to rise ; 

“ Do not trouble yourself, pray, Ephraim. It is my 
cousin, whom I expected.” 

Ephraim Reed did rise, however, as the visitor 
entered, although the respect thus evinced was very 
like that of the “ world’s people ; ” and the Quakeress 
laid down her knitting, rose, and swept the most 
charming of quiet courtesies, as the guest removed 
his furred cap and shook back the heavy capes of 
his riding-coat from his shoulders, with the usual 
words of greeting to those whom he evidently al- 
ready knew. 

“Thee is welcome, captain,” said the Quaker. 
“Thee must be cold, after thy ride; will thee draw 
near to the fire and warm thyself.^ ” 


Captain Anstruther's Documents. 151 

“No, thanks,” was the reply. “My time is very 
brief. If my cousin will so far favor me, I have a 
few words with her, which must be spoken at once, 
and then to horse again.” 

It was notable that though she spoke of him as 
her cousin, Catharine Trafford not only did not offer 
or accept any of those cousinly familiarities which 
the world jestingly calls dangerous between such 
relatives ; she did not even extend her hand in 
greeting, neither did the new-comer offer his, and 
scarcely a word passed between them. Beyond 
doubt, there was either that perfect understanding 
between the two, which would hav'e made any show 
of greeting before others a mock-ery, — or something 
of a widely different character, holding them apart 
except as they might be obliged to meet for some 
special interest. 

And yet, handsome, regally handsome, as was 
Catharine Trafford, there was nothing in the visitor 
to discredit the relationship. He was of medium 
height, young and agile, with a face exciting interest 
if not commanding admiration; his natural hair of 
brown, on a head somewhat notably square though 
well formed, showing queued after the manner of 
the younger men of the time, when the cap was re- 
moved ; and his air and manner indicating unmis- 
takable gentlemanliness blended with vivacity, while 
a trace of blood other than Saxon could be observed 
in many of his gestures and occasionally in the play 
of his features. Something of the vanity of his 
youth was apparent in the polished and colored tops 
of his long horseman’s-boots ; in the cut of the half- 
military dark clothes in which he was wrapped 
against the intense cold of the night ; in the dispo- 


152 The Spur of Mo 7 imonth. 

sition of ruffles at wrist and throat, when his loosed 
wrappings gave them opportunity to be seen ; and 
in the fine and heavy double-caped outer-coat which 
might have had its origin in London or Paris within 
the twelvemonth. He wore sword and pistols, the 
latter showing as he threw back his coat at the mo- 
ment of entering; and the long spurs at heel, man- 
aged without difficulty, denoted cavalry or staff-ser- 
vice and the habit of much riding. 

Following the hint of haste, already recorded, 
Catharine went at once to the mantel, took thence a 
candle in its sconce, lit it at the fire, and stood with 
it in hand, waiting the motion of her visitor. 

“Are thee sure thy room is warm enough for com- 
fort, Catharine?” at that juncture asked Hannah 
Reed, who had resumed her knitting, as her husband 
had also resumed his book. 

“Yes, quite warm enough, thanks — there has been 
a fire there since supper,” was the reply; followed 
by an inclination of the queenly head to him who 
had been called captain. He seemed quite well to 
understand the motion as well as the direction, and 
at once bowed to the others and prepared to follow 
her, cap in hand and his spurs clinking musically. 

The fair guide — fair enough, indeed, to have made 
the following of her possible, had she been known 
to lead much more venturously — opened a door 
from the main apartment, into the cold hall-way, 
where the candle that she carried flared in the sharp 
and windy atmosphere; passing thence, followed by 
her visitor, up a substantial stair of unpainted pine, 
and along a short passage to another door, which 
she threw open, revealing quite as much warmth 
and brightness within as in the chamber they had 


Captain Anstruther^s Doctime 7 its. 153 

just quitted. That she was either a highly honored 
or a very profitable guest to the Quaker, had been 
obvious from the beginning; but the fact was even 
more evident when it was seen that besides the priv- 
ilege shared with the family below, she enjoyed no 
less than two apartments exclusively her own. 

A room of fair size, with coarsely carpeted floor, 
and curtains at the windows — a table, chairs, a 
lounge or settee, some books, and the remains of 
what had been a large fire in the wide fireplace ; 
while on the table stood a lighted lamp, in full blaze, 
the more certainly showing not only that the occu- 
pant had expected a visitor, but that she had ex- 
pected to hold converse with him in that place 
instead of the parlor beneath. From this room, 
into a smaller apartment, a door stood half open for 
the admission of warmth to what certain glimpses 
showed to be her bed-chamber ; though this door 
was closed at once by the lady, as she set down the 
candle and motioned her companion to a seat near 
the table, then took her own place in a second stand- 
ing near. 

If it had been noteworthy that no cousinly greeting 
took place between Catharine Trafford and her vis- 
itor, in the presence of others, it was quite as much 
so that when alone together they came no nearer — 
did not touch hands, much less extend any kiss of 
blood recognition. So far as such a thing could be 
between the young and comely of the two sexes, 
they seemed merely members of some business com- 
pact, respectful to each other in the performance of 
what was set down, and even earnest in its perform- 
ance, but with no closer personal bond than was 
thus required. Seated, it was the lady who first 
7 * 


1 54 Thi Spur of Mo 7 imouth. 

spoke, as the other seemed for the moment musing 
and absorbed. 

“At your service, Captain Anstruther,” she said, 
as if a trifle impatient. 

“ I beg pardon for apparent inattention, madame,” 
was the reply. “The fact is, that at the moment 
something before forgotten came into my mind and 
carried me away. It is all over, however ; and now 
it is for me to be 2Xyour service.” 

This with a bow, from his chair, recognized by the 
lady with a courteous bend of the head. And yet 
both were dissembling ; and more or less each knew 
the other to be doing so. No old thought revived 
was it that held Captain Anstruther for the instant 
silent: he had been watching his companion closely, 
out of the corners of his keen though seemingly 
frank eyes, an‘d trying instantaneously to decipher 
what certain something it was, which she possessed 
then and there, and had not possessed when he last 
before met her — what had so suddenly made her 
different while the same — whether the cause was 
quite as safe in her hands then as it had previously 
been. And this, in his eyes, the lady saw as she 
spoke, and was armed accordingly as those are fore- 
armed who are forewarned. 

“ If at my service, then,” she responded on the in- 
stant, “let me ask my question of questions, at once. 
Have you ready the documents that are so neces- 
sary? Never was there fitter time, and never was 
there more occasion ! ” 

“Ah!” replied the officer, with satisfaction in his 
tone — that satisfaction really being the result of his 
reassurance on the point that moment mooted. “ I 
am glad to hear you say so, madame, for it proves 


Captain Anstruther^s Documents. 155 

that you have been on the alert, and not for noth- 
ing. Yes, I have the documents — a goodly pile of 
them, of which I am not sorry to be rid, for riding 
in this neighborhood.” 

As he spoke, he rose for the moment from his 
chair, the more easily to loosen the military belt 
supporting the pistols at his waist, and drawing 
it around, to disencumber from it a package of some 
size securely lashed to the back part of the belt. 
This he handed to the lady, who broke the slight 
cord holding it, and opened it with a little evident 
eagerness, not unnoticed by the other. She took 
up the first of the pile of small printed papers thus 
revealed ; and as she did so, a much smaller though 
stiffer bit of paper — in fact a card of tiny propor- 
tions — fluttered from it to the floor. With the 
gallantry of his sex and profession, the captain 
bent forward to pick it up, but not so quickly as 
to prevent the lady’s doing so. Hastily glancing 
her eye over it, she handed it to the other, with 
the pithy remark : 

“Women can not judge well of these things, I 
suppose ; but I scarcely think it more prudent for 
Captain Anstruther to ride in this neighborhood, 
with that card where it might come to the wrong 
eyes, than even with these dangerous documents of 
which ‘he now relieves himself.” 

“ Relieves himself, in order that you may assume 
the danger — such would have been the whole sen- 
tence, had you chosen to complete it, madame, I am 
led to believe ! ” exclaimed the officer, with a mo- 
mentary flush of the brow. 

“ On my honor, no ! — I meant no sneer ; certainly 
none at the courage of Captain Anstruther — only a 


The Spur of Monmoulh. 


156 

warning,” was the instant and earnest disclaimer, 
accepted by the ofhcer with a clearing of the brow 
and another slight bow of acknowledgment. 

Meanwhile the card lay exposed on the table, and 
in that exposure we may read it, as no prying eye 
was likely to do at that time and in that place. It 
was an address-card (now known as a “visiting” 
one), of fine material, such as ordinarily used and 
only used in intercourse with members of the softer 
sex; and on the embossed surface, minutely and 
daintily engraved, read: “John Andre, Captain H. B. 
M. 26th Reg’t of Foot. On staff service.” 

“I quite admit the gross imprudence, and thank 
God that no less friendly eyes than your tried ones, 
madame, have made the discovery,” he said, with 
another bow. “As an explanation, I may say that I 
packed the papers hurriedly, in my own chamber, 
where, necessarily — ” 

“ If you will pardon me, captain, time presses a 
little, as yourself remarked not long since,” Cathar- 
ine Trafford inter-upted, bringing one more momen- 
tary flush to the brow of the young officer. “ See, I 
will be more careful than you have been. Are you 
quite sure that you have no more of these dangerous 
waifs about your person, than may be among these 
papers?” she continued, taking up the pile first by 
one edge and then the other, and shaking them thor- 
oughly, with no result. 

“Quite sure — yes — thanks for the interest.” 

In the next instant the dangerous trifle had been 
borne the few feet necessary, by the quick hand 
and active steps of the lady, and was safe against 
human deciphering in its new form of tinder and 
ashes. She was back in her chair, and had one of 


Captain AnstnithePs Doannenis. 157 

the pile of documents in her hand, attentively perus- 
ing it, almost at the same moment — her face of 
queenly beauty calm and untroubled, though events 
preceding and following have long since proved that 
she must at that crisis have been passing through 
one of those very agonies of restraint and dissimu- 
lation, racking the physical system not less than tor- 
turing the mental. 

And what was that paper ? Ah, time is inexorable 
in its destructions as in its revenges ; and not even 
the freely expended gold of the historical societies 
can now obtain a copy of what was, less than a hun- 
dred years ago, attainable so easily and so perilously. 
It is only from the after-recollections of a few of 
those into whose hands they fell, that even the pur- 
port of those skillfully devised and specious docu- 
ments can be derived. But enough is known and 
well remembered, to characterize them as pretend- 
edly emanating from patriot sources and printed in 
the patriot interest, appealing to the misused and 
neglected army to take its own welfare and the wel- 
fare of the cause into forceful hands, by refusing 
any longer to serve under a commander who had 
proved himself incapable if no worse, who alienated 
friends and drove over neutrals by his arrogance and 
exactions, who lived in comfort while his soldiers 
starved and froze, and who would, if not checked in 
his course at once tyrannical and unwise, destroy 
the last hope of freedom within the next half-year. 
The writers forbore to suggest who should succeed 
the commander-in-chief ; as, they added, there could 
not be much difficulty in remembering who had won 
such successes as to prove capacity for command, 
or could adduce such honors, as should entitle them 
to alternative consideration. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


SPY REVELATIONS FOR PHILADELPHIA. 

Though this precious paper, printed on a loyalist 
press, at Philadelphia, for distribution in the patriot 
army as emanating from many dissatisfied sharers in 
the conflict for freedom — though this was by no 
means long, it occupied the attention of Catharine 
Traffbrd, when once closely directed to it, for quite a 
considerable period — long enough, at least, for two 
or three careful readings over. When she had done, 
she laid back the separated slip with its companions, 
and expressed her full approval of the verbal ma^ 
chinery calculated to work so powerfully in aid of 
the sedition. 

“Nothing could be worse — that is, nothing could 
be better for the cause and worse for the rebels, than 
the effect of such a document, once in the proper 
hands,” she said, slowly and decisively. 

“And those hands you will take due heed that it 
shall reach, I am assured, madame.^” half-inquired 
and half-asserted the officer. 

“Quite so — you do not need any new assurance, 
I think,” was the repl}^ “ If you do, however — and 
perhaps we all need reassurance at one time or, 
another — let me say, on the honor of a gentle- 
woman, that not one of these papers shall be wasted, 
so far as I can control them ; that they shall all reach 
those ‘ proper hands ' of which I have before spoken. 


S/>y Revelaiio 7 is for Philadelphia, 159 

with the least delay possible. That the address is 
ably written, for its purpose, and that it will produce 
a marked effect, I believe that I have as little doubt 
as yourself. Captain Anstruther; even as I have not 
much more doubt than yourself as to the head that 
dictated, if not the hand that wrote it, with such 
evident attention to all surrounding circumstances.” 

It might have been quite by accident that at that 
moment the shapely white hand of the lady, which 
had been upraised in the earnestness of her speak- 
ing, returned to the table, where it had before rested, 
— but so much out of direction that it touched and 
lay upon the right hand of the other for quite an 
appreciable space before she apparently made the 
discovery of its mislodgment and removed it. If 
an accident, it was a lucky one ; for few men there 
were, much below the traditional fifty of cooling 
blood, capable of enduring the least touch of that 
hand and yet remaining the same that they had been 
before the contact ; and if intentional, the flattery 
was adroit and well timed, for it at once showed her 
recognition of the author, and her additional regard 
for him in that capacity. The new flush on the brow 
of the captain was unmistakably one of pleasure, 
as, when the hand was removed, he bowed once 
more, and said : 

“ I am merely a poor servant of his Majesty, mad- 
ame, and therefore can neither deny nor affirm any- 
thing with which I am not specially charged. That 
fact will not prevent my remembering, however, the 
faithfulness, and, let me add, the keen judgment, of a 
lady intrusted with high interests, who will deserve 
fitting reward and receive it.” 

For an instant, then, there was an answering flush 


i6o The Spur of Mo7ifnouth. 

not only on the regal brow of Catharine Traflford, 
but on her waxen cheek ; but it passed away as it 
came, and even if the eyes of Captain Anstruther 
saw it, he may well have been rather flattered than 
puzzled by the expression, as evidencing at once his 
own influence and adroitness. His next words, too, 
covered much more than that expression. 

“And now, as time is really pressing close, pardon 
a few inquiries with which I am necessarily commis- 
sioned. First: Has the rebel general quitted his 
marquee and taken roof, as it was understood that 
he would do so soon as the troops were — what do 
these fellows call it? — ah, hutted?” 

“Yes, captain; I have reliable word that the gen- 
eral abandoned his marquee nearly a week sfhce, and 
removed to a stone house, belonging, if I remember 
the name correctly, to a man named Potts, standing 
at the junction of the small river — creek I believe 
they call it — with the Schuylkill.” 

“ Humph ! good — very good ! — that justifies one 
of the charges in the address, that he allows his 
soldiers to freeze while comfortably housed himself! ” 
commented the officer; then adding: “What other 
changes, if any ? ” 

“In the situation of the rebel troops — none. 
They are suffering fearfully, as they have been since 
they encamped. No clothing has come in, that I 
can learn. They have a trifle more of food, since 
the issuing of a threatening order — ” 

“The order of Washington to enforce the thresh- 
ing out and bringing in of grain, from fifty miles 
around, under the threat of confiscating all remain- 
ing, as straw?” the captain interrupted. “Yes, we 
have heard of that ; it furnished, indeed, the material 


Sj^y Kevelations for Philadelphia. i6i 

for one paragraph in the address. Excuse the inter- 
ruption, madame. What more } ” 

“They have a trifle more of grain-food, since that 
order; but of meat even less. You will be pleased 
to know that with food scarce and bad, defective 
clothing and bare feet (for their leather, they say, 
has quite given out), there is even more sickness 
than before.” 

Captain Anstruther rose from his chair, took a 
turn or two of the room with no pleased expression 
of face, and then dropped back into his seat with 
that expression scarcely more amiable. Impatience 
and displeasure sit not well on any human face ; and 
yet it is doubtful whether over that of the soldier 
calling himself Captain Anstruther, there ever passed 
a shade more honorable to his manhood, than the 
pain visible there as he heard the last words of the 
singular woman at his side. Nay, in his own dire 
extremity, if, as is believed, such dire extremity one 
day came to him, it is doubtful if one thought more 
consoling accompanied, connected with the life then 
ending, than that, whatever he had done, believing 
it to be his duty to king and country, he had felt no 
joy in his enemies perishing away by famine and dis- 
ease. But what could he do — what could he say — 
there and then, to make more evident the pain thus 
forced upon him ? 

Without apparent heed to all this, Catharine Traf- 
ford’s recital went on, when he had resumed his 
seat : 

“They have but a single hospital, as I think that 
you have already been informed. It holds less than 
one hundred, in an}”- comfort ; and not less than five 
hundred are sick, any given day. Consequently, the 


i 62 


T]ie Spur of Mo7imouth. 


ranks are thinning rapidly. Meanwhile, it is neces- 
sary for you to be advised that there can not be any 
intention of removal, as they are throwing up — is 
it not earth-works that you call them ? — over all the 
hills, for miles, with several forts, and their cannon 
well placed. Is there anything more that you would 
care to know, I wonder.^” 

Captain Anstruther, by the time- she thus turned 
her account into a more interesting and less objec- 
tionable channel, had quite recovered from any late 
embarrassment ; but there was evidently a new one 
oppressing him, as he replied to her question by 
another, with some hesitation. 

“Yes, madame, there is something more, and of 
importance. You quite understood the allusions to 
persons in the last paragraph of the address, of 
course ? ” 

“ Quite — certainly. To Gates and Lee.” 

“Right, madame, as becomes / Of the former, 
I do not need to be advised ; but of the latter — may 
I venture to ask how you stand, at the present, with 
General Charles Leef' the name and title strongly 
emphasized. 

For the first time during the interview, a laugh 
came to the lips of Catharine Trafford — a laugh ma- 
terially relieving her visitor. 

“Oh, do not be nervous, pray, in asking so plain 
a question, captain ! How I stand with General 
Charles Lee.? Magnificently, after the calculations 
ordinarily made by women, I fancy. He is quite as 
much in love with me as ever ; seeks me as often as 
possible ; fights me over his campaigns with Stan- 
islaus-Augustus, with the King of Portugal, and 
Frederick the Prussian ; quarrels with me every 


spy Revelations for Philadelphia. 163 

second time, with or without a cause ; details me how 
he hates and despises Washington, and what he in- 
tends to do when he comes to command the army 
that he says Washington has kept a mere rabble ; 
and generally makes himself interesting to a person 
of my temperament, with the addition (and this I do 
not tell you as a warning, captain,) ” her light laugh 
again sounding out bewitchingly as she spoke, “that 
he has declared his intention of forfeiting his life- 
long vow of celibacy in my behalf, and of pursuing 
with undying hate any one who dares to come be- 
tween us. Tell me, pray — is not that state of affairs 
eminently satisfactory?” 

“Eminently so, I should say!” replied the officer, 
almost moved to join in her laughter, by the naivete 
of the statement, so unlike the lady’s usual treatment 
of him. “And, such being the case, there can not 
be much doubt of your being able to extract from 
him — ” 

“Anything that I wish, and much more than I de- 
sire I ” was the prompt interruption. “ Depend upon 
it, that if I even find Charles Lee’s fondness running 
short, I have only to appeal to his rage, to learn all 
that he knows or fancies ! ” 

“That is all, then, I think — and thanks for so 
much,” said the captain, rising and throwing his 
heavy coat about him in readiness for departure. 
Even with the making of this motion, and without 
otherwise alluding to the fact, he drew from the 
pocket of his waistcoat and placed on the table, so 
carefully that no jingle could alarm any waiting ear, 
what the eye could easily recognize as a purse well 
filled with coin ‘of some description. Catharine 
Trafford neither acknowledged her sight of the ob- 


164 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


ject, as an acceptance, nor made any motion of rejec- 
tion ; she might, for any look or action, have been 
unaware of its existence ; she was, once again, calmly 
and almost stonily herself, as she had been at the 
commencement of the interview. Merely, as she 
relighted the extinguished candle at the fire, to light 
the visitor and herself down the dark stairway, she 
said : . 

“Captain Anstruther, permit me a question and a 
suggestion.” 

“Certainly, madame, with pleasure.” 

“ In what direction do you ride } ” 

For an instant, again there came out of the frank 
eyes of the captain the same sidelong and suspicious 
look which had been visible there when first enter- 
ing the apartment ; but it passed away again as soon, 
scarcely giving time for note before he answered : 

“To the bridge, two miles below; then over flie 
Schuylkill, to Norristown, if I meet no obstruction 
by the way. Had you a reason of importance for 
asking, madame?” 

“ If you ride in that direction — none. I felt it 
my duty to hint to you that the road by the King of 
Prussia is not the safest, at present ; nothing more.” 

“ Many thanks, again — I will heed the warning, 
without further question.” 

Five minutes later, courteously shown by Cathar- 
ine Trafford through the parlor where Ephraim Reed 
and his wife still pursued what appeared to be the two 
winter occupations of their lives, and bidden good- 
night by her at the outer door with that brief cere- 
mony needed by cousinship — Captain Anstruther 
passed down the snowy path leading to the out- 
houses, and rode away toward Norristown. Ten 


. spy Revelations for Philadelphia. 165 

minutes thereafter, Catharine Trafford was back in 
her chamber, lying on the couch before the dying 
' fire in what seemed the* very abandonment of angry 
shame and self-abasement, but with one shapely foot 
touching the floor, and ground under it what seemed 
to be a purse of gold, stamped and flattened in mad 
rage ! 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

FROM BEHIND A CORD-WOOD RANK. 

“Dead sure of yer man, are ye, Bill Jims?" 

“Sure and sartin, Joe Tatum ! I never go off at 
half-cock, any more than old Queen Anne here," 
tapping the butt of the long queen’s-arm as he spoke. 
“That is, ye onderstand — not so much sartin of my 
man, as of the kind o’ man he is — a Britisher, some 
sort or other, sure ; and coinin’ down this yere road, 
every few nights, on some errand that won’t bear 
candle-light, let alone sunlight. Ye can take my hat, 
coat and boots, Joe, if that ain’t gospil ! ’’ 

“ Wall, if that’s sure. Bill, 'tain’t o’ much conse- 
kens who the man is, anyway. None o’ them in- 
fernal Britishers, or Hussians, or anything o’ that 
stripe, has any business within three or four miles o’ 
the gineral’s quarters, that’s sure ; and they wouldn’t 
be cornin’ if there was not something in the wind — 
spyin’, or layin’ traps for a surprise, or something 
like that.” 

“ I hain’t told ye afore, Joe," said Bill Jims (whose 
true name may possibly have been William James, 
with the family cognomen abbreviated as if a Chris- 
tian one), “ but ye might as well hev my idee, and see 
what you think of it. Heard anything of the woman 
down to Cedar? ’’ 

“Old Reed’s? — yes, a little, though not much. 


Behind a Cord- Wood Rank. 167 

What about herf Anything to do with this chap, do 
you think ? ” responded Joe, with a new interest. 

“That’s what I'm a-comin' to,” answered Bill. “ I 
seed her, a few days ago, with old Reed, in two 
cheers, in a sled, up there nigh the King o’ Prussia. 
I tell you, Joe, she’s a stunner. Spite of her bein’ 
wrapped up so, she’s harnsome as a picter ; ye 
couldn’t hide her by wrappin’ her up, any more than 
the sun jest by drawin’ a few clouds around it. Tall, 
Joe — taller’n a good many men, with a face like 
wax, and eyes that seem to go right through a fel- 
ler’s gizzard — that there woman could do what she 
liked, with any man that I ever seed ; don’t keer if 
he was even a minister ! ” 

“Phew!” said Joe, a little impatiently. “Seems 
to me. Bill Jims, that she’s been puttin’ a halter on 
you, anyway. But what’s that got to do with this 
horseback feller.^ Goes down there a courtin’ of 
her, eh ? Cause, if I thought so, blarst me if I’d 
draw a bead on him, any more than I’d knock over a 
mother-quail on her nest ! Courtin’s allowable. Bill, 
even in war-time; so if that’s what you mean — ” 
“That’s jest exactly what I don't mean!” inter- 
rupted Bill. “If you’d keep yer tongue still, Jo§. 
once in awhile, long enough to let your brains have 
fair play, maybe you’d understand something. No ! 
Now ye know old Reed, nigh as well as I do.^* ” 

“Yes — an old Tory as well as a Quaker, I’ve an 
idee.” 

“Jest so. Well, now — what was that there harn- 
some woman, no relation to Reed or his wife, as I 
can heern tell on, coinin’ down there for, jest at the 
time when the army was a squattin' down at the 
Forge?” 


i68 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


• “Why, thunder, Bill ! — ye don’t believe that she is 
a spy, do ye ? ” 

“ Have a good deal o’ strong suspicion that way, 
Joe, puttin’ this and that together. I’ve heern tell 
more than one time, about fightin’ people, hereaway 
and thereaway, employin’ their women cattle to go 
into places as would have been risky for the men, 
and pick up what they wanted to know ; haven’t 
you, Joe ? ” 

“Sometimes — maybe — I disremember,” said Joe, 
whose historical information may have been less ex- 
tensive than that of his companion. “ But if you 
say that you believe that she is a spy, Joe — ” 

“ I say. Bill, that I have strong suspicions that 
way,” again the other interrupted. “Then I say that 
this horseman — sojer, or whatever he may be, and a 
Britisher, anyway, or he wouldn’t have been there — 
has been seen close to the Grove, and always o’ 
nights. Stands to reason, then, that the harnsome 
woman is a spy, and that she kerries on her deviltry 
with the Britishers in the city, through that very 
dientical horseman. Don’t you see ? That’s why 
I’ve got you to lay for him, with me ; that’s why 
we’ll put a bead on him, sure, when he comes back.” 

Something of the purpose of these men may be 
easily gathered from their conversation, as well as 
the beliefs of one of them, leading to the spending 
of some hours, if not a whole night, in the sharp 
wintry air, especially for the benefit of the man sus- 
pected. But the explanation is needed, of saying 
that the time was the same night when Captain An- 
struther made the important call upon Catharine 
Trafford, recorded in the last chapter, — and that the 
place was an ambush on the road between Valley 


Behind a Cord- Wood Rank. 169 

Forge and the King of Prussia, a little be5^ond that 
point at which any one leaving Cedar Grove would 
have turned away toward the latter. 

Comparatively scanty as are the woods, to-day, in 
Eastern Pennsylvania, entitled to be called forests, 
it will be remembered that in seventeen hundred and 
seventy-eight a large proportion of the whole face 
of the country was covered with timber growth 
worthy to be called by that ambitious designation ; 
and during the winter season, when not hindered or 
disturbed by the hostilities then so widely raging, the 
sound of the woodman's ax rang cheerily through 
the frosty air, leveling the monarchs of the grove 
and preparing alike for the needs of the broad fire- 
places and chimneys of the time, and for that period 
when little should remain of all that proud sylvan 
glory. During the previous winter, most of the 
timber crowning a rise in the near neighborhood had 
been felled, worked up into the convenient shape of 
cord-wood, and piled at the side of the road for 
future removal, making a close barrier for some 
score of yards, of quite the height of a man’s head, 
with intervals of less altitude caused by careless 
piling or the removal of a certain quantity of the 
wood for use. Beyond this, at either end, half- 
cleared trees and brushwood, remains of earlier 
woodcraft, formed the most impenetrable of hedges, 
and almost totally obscured the view into the road ; 
but here, where there was a somewhat rapid descent 
into a hollow, looking over the top of the cord-wood 
pile, or through any one of the breaks in it, forming 
natural loop-holes and embrasures, there was a clear 
sight along the broken'highway, the clearer because 
of the snow on the opposite side and the field be- 
8 


170 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


yond, and making it impossible for any one to pass 
along it without being under view for a considerable 
distance. 

Behind this barrier it was that the two, whose 
names have alread}'^ come to us in their conversation, 
had ensconced themselves ; and that they had ex- 
pected a somewhat extended term of waiting was 
evident from the fact that they had kindled a fire 
from some broken fence-rails and brush, entirely 
invisible from the road, but serving an excellent 
purpose in keeping warm their feet and lower limbs, 
as one could stand on each side of it and enjoy the 
warmth while keeping watch over the convenient 
obstruction. In the hand of each, as he stood, was 
grasped one of those old muskets which had come 
into the country during the French war, and from 
which so much of the guerrilla and no small part 
of the army service of the struggle were supplied. 
Rough-faced, coarsely clothed men, both, having no 
other connection with the series of events under 
consideration than the single action of that night, 
and presenting no special feature for comment or 
description ; but types of a large proportion of those 
who did what may be called the “ outside work ” of 
the conflict — uneducated, impulsive, often erring 
and not seldom criminal, though undeniably patri- 
otic and acting in what they believed to be the line 
of their duty. 

Two hours earlier on that memorable night, Tatum, 
living some two miles westward from the King of 
Prussia tavern, had been called upon by Jims, living 
half-a-mile farther distant than himself in the same 
direction, — in a sort of comradery which subsequent 
developments showed to have existed even in that 


Behind a Cord- Wood Rank. 


7 


strongly royalist section — little differing from that of 
the minute-men of the Eastern States. Jims, coming 
homeward from some errand to the banks of the 
Schuylkill, had seen a horseman ride down the road 
leading from the tavern of the ambiguous name, and 
take that turning which would carr)^ him to Cedar 
Grove. Enough of light had then been remaining, 
with the snow to aid, for him to recognize the ac- 
credited “Britisher” of previous visits to the same 
locality, whom, in his own mind, Jims had already 
marked out as a proper victim for the popular am- 
bush. He had a grown son, to whom, if the struggle 
should go on long enough, he intended to impart all 
the education of the guerrilla, but as 5'^et too young 
to be depended upon in enterprises demanding the 
cool head and the steady hand ; so he had left the 
youngster sitting at home, and sought for his com- 
rade of the night in the ready Tatum, gradually im- 
parting to the latter, as they sought their place of 
concealment, and afterward, as we have heard, the 
duty that was to be done and the motives impelling 
it. 

It has already been made evident that Tatum was 
a shade in doubt as to the personality of the in- 
tended victim, until reassured by Jims; and we have 
also already seen that he objected to the shooting of 
men, whatever their nationality or profession, when 
in pursuance of that pleasant penance known as 
“courting.” But it may fairly be presumed that the 
words of iiis comrade quickly disabused him of 
any such erroneous pity in the present case, and 
that he grasped his old queen’s-arm with as much 
homicidal force as the other, when led to believe 
that he had to do with a spy, or, worse than a spy. 


172 


The Spur of Moiwiouth. 


the employer of spies and messenger between a 
located one and the officers of the obnoxious royal 
army. 

“Oh, that’s the game, then, is it?” he exclaimed, 
when Bill Jims had ended his explanation. “Spyin’, 
or layin’ traps, as I said afore ! Well, I’ve axed 
about as many questions, tryin’ to prove that he 
wasn’t guilty, as a plain man has any call to ax — 
that’s my idee ; and now, if he comes ridin’ along 
here, when he oughter be at home and in out of the 
cold, why, if this here old thing happens to go off, 
right in the direction where he is, whose fault will it 
be — mine or his'n, I should like to know?” 

“Right you are, every time, Joe Tatum, when you 
get a chance to argufy the thing out correct,” was 
the encouraging comment of Jims, giving him at 
the same moment a slap on the back which served 
the double purpose of emphasizing the opinion and 
warming his own numbed hands. “ So that’s settled, 
and everything’s ready for my gentleman ! And 
mind, Joe, if ever there’s anything out of this, on- 
pleasant, or so — mind, that the fault’s all mine, and 
if anybody’s to swing, or get an ounce of cold lead 
on account of it, ’tain’t you, but me, for you wouldn’t 
have been here but for me ! ” 

Whether the cold of the night for a time after 
chilled their words, or whether both judged it pru- 
dent to preserve silence as against the chance of 
possible discovery — certain it is that for some space 
thereafter no word passed between the two. The 
night was indeed bitter cold ; and without the fire, in 
that inaction, even their tough frames would have 
been thoroughly chilled in what had now grown to 
some three hours of waiting. No one had passed 


Behind a Cord- Wood Rank. 173 

the road ; all was and had been silence, except as 
now and then a sharp blast of the winter wind went 
sighing through the leafless trees on either hand, 
and added to the desolate coldness of the place and 
the time. Silent and stern, then, as are traditionally 
supposed to be. the ministers of fate, they watched 
and waited with that deadly purpose — a purpose 
which many who read will believe to have been quite 
unwarranted ; which thousands will condemn as 
mere murderous intent without aim or reason; but 
which all can not wholly reprobate, until some of the 
records of later wars in which we as a people have 
supplied both the belligerent forces, are washed 
away and forgotten. Once, in that waiting, the fire 
burning somewhat low and the cold increasing. Bill 
Jims, leaving the other alone on the watch, broke 
up part of an additional fallen fence-rail and added 
it to the pile, with no more idea of the purpose for 
which he was really creating that renewed blaze, 
than had, say, the leaden pellets in his own musket, 
of their deadly destination. 

It must have been past eleven o’clock — if there is 
such a thing in a winter night, beside a country 
road, with possibly no time-piece within a league — 
when the silence was at last broken by what seemed 
the sound of horses’ hoofs. Both heard it at nearly 
the same instant, sounding up from the road below, 
in the direction from which the fated horseman was 
expected. Both said “ Hark ! ” and “ Listen ! ” at the ' 
same second. Both listened, and knew that they had 
not been deceived. There was the beat of a horse’s 
feet, ridden rapidly, and coming from toward Cedar 
Grove. Then they knew that the time was at hand, 
and that in the next moment all would be done or 


174 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


missed. But at least one of the two understood 
that, even in the dusk, and with a horseman riding 
at greater speed than was there likely, missing was a 
thing literally impossible. The explanation of his 
confidence was communicated to the other, quickly 
and in a low voice, little chance as there was of his 
being overheard. 

“There he comes, and now for it!” said Tatum, 
laying his musket across a broken part of the pile, 
forming an embrasure. 

“Yes, there he comes, and see where he goes!” 
grimly answered Bill Jims, in that low voice. “Take 
him in he head, Joe, for you have ball. Mine’s 
buck-shot, about two ounces of ’em, and I’m agoin’ 
to~ e low; sure to hit him somewhere.” 

[ tie next moment the rider emerged into the par- 
tial sight of the watchers — such as could be afforded 
by the winter midnight and some fifty yards of dis- 
tance. They could see a dark figure, with a cap, on 
a dark horse, galloping along rapidly and uncon- 
cernedly. Not a word between the two, now — as, 
when all is arranged, last words are always a folly. 
Five beats of the pulse, and the figure was nearly 
opposite — five more, and he would be past the line 
of fire. “ Now ! ” came the word from Bill Jims ; and 
both fired together, the two streams of flame pour- 
ing over the top of the pile with the suddenness, 
and alas! with the deadly force, of the lightning! 
'One half-stifled scream of agony burst from the 
rider; the horse was seen, even through the slight 
smoke of the guns, to rear in affright; and then the 
figure of the rider toppled over and fell heavily to 
earth with that dull thud which seems to be the 
special property of crushed human flesh, while the 


Behind a Cord- Wood Bank, 175 

horse, wresting the bridle from the dying hand, suc- 
cumbed to his fright, broke away, and fled rapidly 
up the road toward the King of Prussia. Whatever 
had been intended — whatever was to be — the deed 
was accomplished ! 

It was war-time, but neither of the slayers of the 
suspected spy had as 5''et fully served an apprentice- 
ship to the dreadful trade ; neither had as yet be- 
come fully alive to the ease with which homicide can 
be palliated as well as committed. For quite a mo- 
ment, after seeing the figure of the slain man fall 
from the horse and the frightened animal flee away, 
all the movement made by either was th^t each 
looked round, without word, at the other! Then, 
with one half-shuddering impulse (so rapidly d ^.s 
the mentality change, under certain condition 
each leaned his musket against the pile and started 
for. the road. Having committed no crime, there 
was no necessity of escaping the consequences of 
one, apart from the fact that they were in a lonely 
road, at midnight, with no possibility of their deed 
being known except from their own lips. Besides, 
on the body of the “ spy " there might be papers of 
consequence : let us not undervalue them so much 
as to believe that at the moment either thought of 
money possibly also on that remain of what had so 
lately been a living man. 

They sprang, side by side, into the road. They 
approached the body, where it la5^ a doubled heap, 
in the centre of the highway. Little was to be seen, 
in the dusk, beyond the mere form, and a horrible 
assertion of blood which showed itself in the whole 
face being streamed over -with the red fluid from a 
wound in the forehead, which had, however, not 


176 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


borne away the cap. Before they had yet stooped 
over him, a new thought struck both at the same 
moment: how much more readily and satisfactorily 
would be made the search, beside the fire in the rear 
of the barrier, with its warmth and light ! flurriedly 
they took up the body, carried it to one end of the 
pile, and thence around to the fire, which Tatum en- 
livened to a momentarily bright blaze by kicking 
into it some of the rail-splinters lying near. 

As the light blazed up. Bill Jims stooped over the 
figure, as if to begin the rummaging of the pockets. 
As he did so, Tatum, not yet turned away from the 
fire, heard him utter a horrified exclamation, and saw 
him start back, and then rush forward again and pull 
away the cap from the wounded brow. A youth of 
eighteen lay there, commonly clothed, the eyes wide 
open in agony, part of the brow torn away, and the 
form already stiffening in death. Bill Jims was on 
his knees beside the body, staring at the face with 
eyes almost as stony as those of the dead, and utter- 
ing words that the other never forgot, in all that the 
war additionally brought of violence and desolation. 

“My Bill! My boy] God strike me dead! — I 
have killed my boy! Look, Joe! — it can’t be — it 
must be — tell me, isn’t that Bill? Why don’t you 
speak? My boy, and I killed him! God strike me 
dead, for I don’t want to live ! ” 

It had needed only one look, for the father ; it only 
needed a second, and those words, spite of the blood 
streaming over the face, to tell Joe Tatum that the 
corpse was indeed that of Bill Jims’ son, bearing the 
same name, who had thus been slain by father and 
friend. It was only later that he knew how the lad, 
caring nothing for the winter night cold, and in love 


Behind a Cord- JVood Rank. 


177 


with a girl of his own age living down near the bank 
of the Schuylkill, had borrowed the horse of one of 
the neighbors, after his father’s departure, and per- 
haps in the freedom of that very departure — ridden 
away to his boyish love-tryst, and spent the last 
hours that he was ever to know on earth with the 
object of his young fancy, to meet that awful fate on 
his return homeward. 

The stricken and blood-stained father was still 
kneeling by the body, still uttering words of mad 
grief and self-upbraiding. Rough Joe Tatum’s heart 
bled for him, even more than for the boy whose brow 
his bullet had pierced, riding home from that very 
“courting” which he had just declared allowable, 
and that he “ would as soon kill a mother-quail on 
her nest ” as any one who had that for his errand ! 
But how could he comfort the father, who had not 
only shared in the terrible crime, but led him into it? 
What words with which to take away one pang of 
self-upbraiding? He tried to speak to him, but 
scarcely succeeded in saying one intelligible word ; 
the while the momentarily rekindled fire died away 
again, an*d only threw a faint reflection on the kneel- 
ing father and the corpse of his murdered son. ^ 

Suddenly Bill Jims staggered to his feet. It was 
too dark for even his comrade to see the terrible 
face, with its eyes bloodshot and the mouth drawn 
as if by a stroke of palsy. Nor was Joe Tatum 
able to quite catch, at first, the words accompanying 
his rising. 

“ God strike me dead ! ” he rather moaned than 
spoke. “I can’t tell Betsy, Joe Tatum!— you must 
try to do it, and try to make her understand that I 
didn’t mean to kill him." 

8 * 


178 


The Sptir of Mo7imoidh. 


“Yes, Bill — don’t take on so; I’ll tell her. Oh, 
Lord, what’ll we ever do!-” was the answer of his 
companion, not too connected, and perhaps the worst 
that could have been uttered under the circum- 
stances. 

Tatum did not know, in the half-dusk, what was 
being done, or he might possibly have checked the 
movement. What was done, was this. Leaving 
home on his deadly errand. Bill Jims, perhaps be- 
lieving that in the course of it he might come into 
closer quarters with some foe than would allow “ old 
Queen Anne ” to be available, had thrust into his 
pocket a pistol, ready loaded for any emergency. 
The presence of a weapon is often the deadliest of 
temptations. This man, who could slay a spy from 
behind a wall, and lead a comrade into the same 
blind deed, could not meet the consequences of his 
act, when they involved the carrying home of the 
body of his son, and looking into the face of that 
son’s mother! He had been fumbling with the 
weapon, in his pocket, as he rose : at that moment 
the fell cowardice thoroughly overcame him ; and 
before Joe Tatum could guess his intention, he had 
put the pistol to his temple and literally blown out 
his brains, with the side of the head containing 
them, falling without a cry on the corpse of his son, 
and leaving his poor comrade not only with two 
pieces of intelligence to communicate to “ Betsy,” 
but with the care of two guns and two bodies, alone 
beside the fatal road and the dying fire, in the winter 
midnight. 

“The road by the King of Prussia is not the safest, 
at present,” Catharine Trafford had said, only an hour 
or two before, to the departing Captain Anstruther, 


Behind a Cord- Wood Rank. 179 

It certainly would not have been so, on that night, 
had he returned as he went. But for any fear of the 
two muskets that night supposedly aimed at his life, 
he might thereafter have ridden there in all safety. 
For the hand holding one was dead and cold ; and 
that of Joe Tatum, holding the other, was not likely 
to perform a second of those blind and reprehensible 
violences of savage war, at whatever call of patriot- 
ism or demand of comradery. He had had quite 
enough, for one lifetime, of eye-shut operations in 
which some other took all the responsibility. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

COLONEL GEOKGE VERNON’S SECOND CONFERENCE. 

When Colonel George Vernon, on the night of 
the 15th of January, made his second approach to 
the house of the Quaker, at Cedar Grove, at some 
eight o’clock in the evening — it is probable that, 
however absorbed he might otherwise have been in 
those matters constituting material for the proposed 
interview, no small share of his anxiety was found in 
the fact that he would either fail to see Catharine 
Trafford alone (in which event the public business, 
to say the least, must suffer), or be obliged again to 
witness the abandonment of their comfortable fire- 
side ,by Ephraim Reed and his wife, in order to his 
enjoying that desired private conference. But Col- 
onel Vernon was not the first, as he has not been 
the last, to foresee difficulties having no existence, 
and to revolve schemes for removing obstructions 
already well out of the way. 

For when once more the stout foot sounded on 
the floor of the piazza and the clear and decided 
knock rang through the house, though his first 
glance was one of disappointment, a very different 
sensation rapidly succeeded. It was the Quaker 
himself who opened the door, and who said, as be- 
fore : “ Enter, friend ! ” replying to the “ Good even- 
ing ! ” of the visitor, with the additional ; “ Good 
evening to thee, friend — thee is welcome.” Scarcely 


Colonel V^crnoiCs Scxond Conference. i8i 

had the colonel found time to sweep his eye around 
the room, to greet with a bow the presence of Han- 
nah Reed, and to see that she for whom he especially 
looked was not present — when Ephraim Reed re- 
lieved his momentary anxiety by a few words uttered 
while he followed a late example of Catharine, light- 
ing the candle which had been standing in readiness 
on the table : 

“The young woman whom thee seeks, friend, is 
not gone away, as thee fears ; she is in her own 
chamber, where there is a fire and all comfort. 1 
have her desire that I would show thee up, when 
thee came ; and I will do so if thee pleases.” 

Had Colonel George Vernon been a man of the 
world, he would probably have taken note, as he 
obeyed the movement of the Quaker, of a marked 
change which had occurred in what might be called 
the proprieties of the house, within the preceding 
eight-and-forty hours. Only that time past, the host 
had thought it necessary to warn his female guest of 
the peril of even remaining alone, in the common 
roonij with one who was but a stranger ; now, he was 
lighting that stranger, without remark, to what he 
designated as the young woman’s own chamber ! 
Certainly, if the oddity struck him, he must have 
resolved it by deciding that, whoever and whatever 
she might be in other regards, Catharine Trafford 
must be a power in the house, capable not only of 
making laws for herself, but of enforcing them upon 
the obedience of others. Perhaps some following 
and even stranger thoughts may have passed through 
his mind, in the brief time elapsing while he left the 
lower room at the heels of the Quaker, threaded the 
stairway and passages, and found himself waiting for 


i 82 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


the reply from within to the knock of the host, at 
the door entered by Captain Anstruther on the pre- 
vious evening. 

That reply was not long in coming. Nearly on 
the instant the lady opened the door, with a word of 
welcome and the extending of the wondrous white 
fingers ; and the officer, while the Quaker delivered 
his candle into hands that would soon need it more 
than his own, entered the apartment and saw the 
door closed behind him — to realize, perhaps, the 
moment after, a closer though profane understanding 
of the sacred words : “And so thou bringest them to 
the haven where they would be ! ” than had ever be- 
fore fallen to his experience. 

The chamber, with its light on the table, its two or 
three chairs, its lounge, its liberal fire of logs drop- 
ping away from blaze to the heat of ruddy coals, and 
its closed door indicating the bedroom adjoining — 
all this was precisely as Captain Anstruther had so 
lately seen it ; and yet how differently it looked to 
the eyes now for the first time privileged to dwell 
upon it ! To the British captain, there had merely 
been a pleasant apartment — very humble beside 
many others that he was accustomed to enter ; and 
its occupant had been a lady, reasonably young and 
very fair, but moving him no more, outside of words 
and actions connected with a mission involving the 
reverse of respect, than one of the pieces of furni- 
ture surrounding her. This to the emissary of King 
George : to the Continental officer, what } He, too, 
had a mission, and one of the most practical descrip- 
tion ; and to him the lady should have been what 
she was to the other, and nothing more. Na)’', she 
should have been even less, if there is truth in that 


Colonel Fernon*s Second ConJer€ 7 ice. 183 

dictum which holds youth to be more impressible 
than age, and believes that blood and brain cool when 
the fourth decade of man’s life is going onward to 
the fifth. Yet to this man, the apartment, as he en- 
tered it, seemed far more than a presence-chamber 
in any palace trodden by human feet — more like 
some bower in one of the fairy realms of old legend, 
in which the comer, if permitted, could be content 
to fold away his wings of wandering and remain in a 
happy and delicious enchantment forever. For to 
him, the woman before him was something more 
than a fair woman : she was to him (there can now 
be no doubt of the fact, nor must the pen hesitate 
in the declaration) the long-sought and late-found 
embodiment of all that was poetical in his nature — 
something informing every place and object around 
her with an aroma and atmosphere of delicious in- 
toxication — something perhaps to be respected, 
perhaps to be feared or even despised, but in either 
case to be loved with a delirious devotion verging 
upon idolatry. 

And yet, how little of all this was conveyed by 
any glance or gesture of Colonel George Vernon, 
bred to self-restraint except under extraordinary 
circumstances, and entering that chamber with ob- 
jects so different in view from any enticing the 
lover! He could not but mark again, at the very 
instant of coming into Catharine Trafford’s presence, 
the perfect stately form, the soft brown eyes with 
lashes that veiled them almost to darkness, the coro- 
net of abundant chestnut hair touched with gold 
wherever fire-light or lamp-light shone upon it. and 
all this brought into new grace and appropriateness 
in its new setting of pale gray which had taken the 


184 


The Spur of Mo7ww2iih. 


place of dead black in her costume. He could not 
but mark all these details, as one sees the whole 
landscape in a single flash of lightning; but there 
was small reason to believe that the brown eyes, 
looking through their vail of long lashes, could see 
that any strong emotion shook the stalwart form, as 
the officer threw off his hat on entering, touched the 
white hand with precisely that familiarity accorded 
to the gentleman receiving the greeting of a lady, 
and accepted with a bow of acknowledgment the 
chair tendered him beside the little table. 

In the next moment, Catharine Trafford was seated 
opposite him, with no perceptible flush on the waxen 
cheek, and no sign of embarrassment in the recol- 
lection of what had been and what was to be. She 
it was, too, who removed the first awkwardness of 
the position, by entering at once upon the business 
occasioning the second interview, and the motives 
inducing the change of apartments. 

“ I promised you. Colonel Vernon,” she said, “two 
nights since, to satisfy you, so far as lay in my 
power, on certain points that you believed to be 
within my knowledge.” 

“A promise, madame, which honored me, as much 
as I hope and believe that the fulfillment will advan- 
tage the cause I serve,” was the bowed reply. 

“ I need not tell you,” she proceeded, “ how much 
is involved in the few words I have to say, and how 
necessary it is that strict privacy should attend my 
speaking. This may excuse, I hope, the liberty I 
have taken of treating you as a confidential friend, 
in bringing you to my own apartment, where neces- 
sarily I receive only friends and never strangers.” 

“ In this, too, I am doubly honored, madame,” was 


Colonel Vernon's Second Confer e 7 ice. 185 

the response. “ I might even think the honor and 
the confidence both too great, did I not come with 
the introduction of one whom you trust implicitly, 
even as 1 feel that you can trust me." 

“ Of that I am sure — very sure, Colonel Vernon ! ” 
And two or three times, as the lady spoke, she nod- 
ded her stately head as if giving additional force to 
her expression of confidence. 

“Thanks for what I will try to deserve. And now, 
madame, whatever answer you may feel free to make 
to my question of the other evening.” 

“ I am almost afraid,” Catharine Tratford proceeded, 
“ that I have even a worse name than I deserve : in 
other words, that I may have been credited with 
knowledge not at all in my possession, and that you 
will consequently be disappointed when all is told. 
So much premised, I shall be glad if you will assist 
me by naming especially the matters which you wish 
made clearer.” 

“ If I have your permission, then, to put absolute 
questions, I will do so. Pardon me if I seem to be 
taking a liberty in the first. How well do you know 
General Charles Lee, madame ? ” 

For a moment there was a pouting of the full lips, 
and a lifting of the brown eyes with something akin 
to anger in their light. But this only for that brief 
space. Then their owner said, with a voice very low 
and a little troubled : 

“ I had hoped, colonel, that I should not be called 
upon, first, to do the only thing that I dislike to do, 
of the whole.” 

“A thousand pardons, madame — ” the officer be- 
gan, but was interrupted by the same voice, still 
very low, yet wonderfully distinct ; 


The Spur of Moninotith. 


1 86 

“ No — no apologies, I pray, Colonel Vernon. You 
had a perfect right, under iny promise and the re- 
quirement of Nekaneshvva, to ask the question, and 
1 have a corresponding duty to answer it. Let me 
do .so, at once. I know Charles Lee, probably as 
well as he has ever been known, during his life, by 
any other than himself; nay, perhaps I may say 
quite as well as he has known himself, under most 
circumstances.” 

“Thanks for the candor, which becomes you, mad- 
ame — may 1 add like everything else you say or 
do ? ” 

“No — please do not pay me compliments; at 
least, not yet. You do not know — I must at least 
suppose that you do not know — the secret of my 
close acquaintance with General Lee.” 

“ I know nothing, madame, that I have not a right 
to know,” was the reassuring reply of the officer; 
though its effect coujd scarcely have been recognized 
in the next development on the lady's face — a 
blush, hot as noon, though lovely as the flush of 
dawn, burning through the. clear wax of the cheeks 
for just one instant, as she added a half-score of 
words ; 

“Charles Lee has been, for some time past, my 
declared suitor.” 

“ Good heavens, madame ! and I have ventured — .” 
Colonel Vernon, as he spoke, half rose from his 
chair, in unmistakable agitation, though he resumed 
it again at a gesture from the lady, the sentence 
being left uncompleted. 

“ Please to believe that you have ventured noth- 
ing, and that I have not spoken one word which if 
pained me to say. Charles Lee, I repeat it, has been. 


Colonel Verjion's Second Co 7 iference. 187 

for some time past, my declared and ardent suitor. 
Do not think me vain if I add, that, had the matter 
been dependent on him alone, we should before this 
time have been under an engagement of marriage. 
No — please do not interrupt me. We are not en- 
gaged, and will never be. I do not — ” and then, 
from whatever cause, the red flush of a late moment 
burned again as transiently on cheek and brow — “I 
do not love him, and shall never be his wife. Mean- 
while, I respect him, and at the same time pity him. 
I would do anything that was not false to myself, to 
make him wholly and entirely the noble man of 
which he now supplies only a magnificent half.” 

Catharine Tralford had been speaking with energy 
— almost with vehemence, in these last words. No 
one could have doubted either of her assertions: 
that she did not love Charles Lee ; that she held a 
strong regard for him and his reputation. 

“ I think that you have saved me at once the pain 
and the trouble of asking one question, madame,” 
said the Continental colonel, when she paused, “ I 
was about to request your opinion whether General 
Lee was at heart and truly attached to the patriot 
cause } After what you have said, I can derive my 
own answer: you do not believe him false or dan- 
gerous } ” 

“ Dangerous? yes — very dangerous,” was the re- 
ply. “ Dangerous to himself and to others, from 
unbridled temper and controlling vanity. False to 
any cause which he professes to espouse? never! 
Colonel Vernon, you may be sure that I know the 
man of whom I speak, and act safely upon my esti- 
mate of him.” 

“ 1 thank you, madame, and I believe you,” an- 


88 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


swered the officer. "Am I to believe, then, that he 
is not one of the leading intriguers for the command 
of the army ? ” 

"No, colonel — that does not follow,” said Cath- 
arine Trafford. "The man who has fought, and ac- 
cording to all accounts, fought well, in so many 
European armies, may well believe himself the most 
capable of commanders, and aspire to supreme com- 
mand, without any intention of betraying the cause 
— really with the strongest wish, however mistaken, 
to serve it. He is one of the intriguants for the 
baton of General Washington, and one demanding 
the utmost care and attention.” 

"Ha!” spoke Colonel Vernon, somewhat more 
suddenly than was his wont. "Those anonymous 
dispatches to Congress, then, assuming to come 
from New England : he was their author, was he 
not.^” 

"Not of one of them, colonel,” was the quick re- 
ply. " If I am correctly informed, the author of 
those dispatches is really the New England man that 
he calls himself, and one who had much to do with 
the first troubles in Massachusetts.” 

" Enough, madame, on that point,” broke in the 
officer, again in some haste, as if to prevent the ut- 
terance of a name. Had the lady spoken but a few 
words more, the name would undoubtedly have been 
given as that of Samuel Adams — then suspected by 
a few of the better informed, now known to all read- 
ers of the national history, to have been the well- 
meaning but fearfully misguided assailant of the 
chief. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE PERILS AND DELIGHTS OF AMBASSADORS. 

For quite a moment, after interrupting the lady in 
her characterization of the author of the anonymous 
communications, Colonel George Vernon sat silent 
and evidently in deep thought. When he spoke 
again, it was to ask : 

“ I may assume, I think, madame, that you know 
this cabal to have two heads 

“Three, colonel,” was the concise reply. 

“ The third — may I ask your knowledge ? ” 

“Certainly, as I am to make no half-statements. 
The two being, according to your estimation — which 
I may no doubt believe to be that of the commander- 
in-chief, whose confidence you hold — the two being, 
according to that estimation, General Lee and Gen- 
eral Gates, the third is your late inspector, General 
Conway.” 

“Quite right, so far as you go, madame,” said the 
Continental officer. “You can not be fully aware, 
however, how little dangerous General Conway really 
is, since the rumors of his action that have spread 
among the soldiers, making it doubtful whether his 
life would even be safe in their midst. In my friend 
— I may say in the friend of General Washington 
himself — Baron Steuben, too, they have at last seen 
a man in whose hands the post of inspector means 
something; and in the light of their new experience 


190 


The Spur of Mo7i?7wuth, 


Conway has sunk even lower than he deserved. 
No, I think, madame, that we may drop Conway out 
of the estimate, not perhaps as having no will to dis- 
turb, but as having lost the power. Returning to 
Generals Lee and Gates : have you any data for meas- 
uring the comparative dangerousness of the two.^” 

Catharine Trafford imitated the past hesitation of 
Colonel Vernon, before she replied: 

“Of that point, as )'’ou must be aware, colonel, I 
have only limited opportunities for judging. Gen- 
eral Gates is more pushed by others than by himself; 
General Lee is his own warmest advocate. Each de- 
sires to hold the supreme command. Each has the 
disadvantage, before Congress and the country, of 
being a native Englishman. More successful men, 
probably, become so from the advancement forced 
upon them by their friends, than by their own exer- 
tions ; consequently, in my weak woman’s judgment, * 
the chances for the Gates eftbrt lasting longer and 
giving more trouble than the other, would seem 
the stronger.” 

“A ‘weak woman’s judgment,’ allow me to say, 
madame, putting to shame the closest calculations 
of those who have called themselves men, and 
thought themselves powerful in the cabinet and the 
field ! ” was the enthusiastic reply of the officer, 
leaning partially across the little table, and fixing 
upon the speaker a regard so undisguised in its re- 
spectful admiration, that the subject of it may well 
be excused for having flushed yet again, and more 
hotly than before, with a pride and pleasure equally 
uncontrolled. 

“ In which flattering estimate, colonel,” she said, 
her voice tremulous with feeling, “j'-ou do me the 


Perils and Delights of Ambassadors. 191 

honor to attribute too much to the person, I fear, 
and too little to the opportunities. I have been so 
placed — " 

In mid-speech she paused ; the light of pride and 
self-gratulation died out from her face, and a cold, 
gray shade, almost like that of ashes, took its place 
with the rapidity of a transformation. For one in- 
stant, while the eyes of her companion, reading more 
than she knew, dwelt upon her with a love and pity 
equal to her own shame, she struggled to command 
herself; then rose from the table, and walked rapidly 
up and down the apartment ; her face buried in her 
hands, sobs shaking the whole magnificent frame, 
and tears struggling through the fingers that would 
at least have held them back from view. Two or 
three turns of this fierce rage of sorrow, as it may 
be called; and then that occurred upon which most 
certainly she had not calculated, but that upon which 
the veriest theatrical Messalina might well have de- 
pended, for breaking down the last barrier of reserve 
between herself and some half-won object of her wild 
passion. That which might have been deferred — 
that which indeed might never have had place in the 
record of physical events — came with this involun- 
tary action of the proud woman who in the very 
momentary indulgence of her pride found the pain- 
ful memory of a more than counterbalancing abase- 
ment. 

For, remaining two or three minutes in pained 
silence, the Continental officer thereafter became 
wholly man, with all the pressure of the present and 
disregard of the future, belonging to that name and 
nature. He rose from his seat — stood, perhaps un- 
seen by the tcar-blinded eyes, as if doubtful what 


192 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


would be his duty and what permitted — and then, 
when the next turn of the agitated woman brought 
her near him, he advanced a step, threw his arm 
around that waist so tempting to the eye and so pli- 
ant to the touch, and drew the whole form to him as 
if he had been its possessor. 

Photographic facilities were not, in those “ times 
that tried men’s souls ” in more senses than the 
obvious one ; the higher intelligences, looking down 
with unchecked eyes alike through distance and 
physical obstruction, have given us no picture of 
what they saw, when destinies were turning on the 
suggestive grouping of a moment ; but, oh, what 
would it have been, to be able, to-day, to depict the 
Continental officer and the “lady of his love,” in 
that first moment of recognition of the inevitable, 
when godlike face and form was matched by its coun- 
terpart, and two stood close who might each have 
challenged the world for a physical superior ! 

It may have been that that touch was not foreseen 
— that the tears, the inch-long kshes and the clasped 
fingers, hid away any preliminary motion capable of 
giving warning. Or, the brown eyes may have seen 
and understood, even through their tears of shame, 
and both the physical and mental beings made such 
surrender that there was neither thought nor power 
of resistance. One thing is sure — that when the 
touch of the clasping arm was felt, the marvelous 
white hands did not immediately come down from 
Catharine Trafford’s face — that they were even there 
when she submitted to the pressure which drew her 
close teethe breast of Colonel George Vernon — when 
the queenly head of chestnut and gold, crowned with 
its diadem of nature’s weaving, drooped over as if it 


Perils and Delights of Ambassadors, 193 

indeed belonged to some magnificent flower that the 
dew of tears overweighted, until the lily stem of the 
neck bent and gave way, and the head lay unresist- 
ing on the broad breast offering it shelter. 

“Am I forgiven for this liberty, madame?” the in- 
carnate gentleman crushed down all other feelings, 
to ask, after one instant of silence. 

“ Forgiven — oh, more than forgiven. I thank you 
from my heart ! ” was the enrapturing reply, the 
hands withdrawn from the face, and one of them 
seeking the disengaged one of the officer; though 
the eyes still remained closed, with the tears gem- 
ming the long lashes and the cheeks still touched 
with the rain of sorrow so lately fallen. 

Even great men are not superior to great tempta- 
tions ; perhaps the very strength of a strong nature 
makes the plunge more assured, when once the vic- 
tim is within the radius of a certain vortex. No 
softer, sweeter red lips ever lay beneath the eyes of 
man, than those pouted up at that moment, with 
just a glimmer of the white pearly teeth instantane- 
ously caught between, to show that sweet breath 
came and human words issued through those ruby 
portals. With a suddenness generally foreign to his 
nature, but with a decision in the pressure which 
showed that this time there would be no apology for 
the act when committed, the Continental officer bent 
down his face — not far, with so tall a companion — 
and pressed on those lips one long, passionate kiss, 
informing the whole of both beings, and establishing 
between the two an electric chain of communication 
that could never again be quite broken \xhile life 
lasted and memory endured. The next moment, 
with a sigh revealing the whole of her thus-far 
9 


194 


The Spur of Mojwwuth. 


starved, long-rebellious, but now surrendering wo- 
manhood, Catharine Trafford was held close in both 
the strong arms, only one of which had before en- 
circled her — her own arms around the neck of the 
officer, and meeting repeated kisses and low love- 
words that seemed to break like a previously re- 
strained torrent from his lips, with answering kisses 
quite as ardent, and murmured utterances, tell'ing 
her whole shamed but delighted secret of a passion 
born, nurtured and grown to overmastering propor- 
tions, v’ jhin eight-and-forty hours! 

Supreme moments are brief in duration, and well 
it is for humanity that they are so. Were they other- 
wise, human life would burn out, as certainly and as 
completely as any of those planets are believed to 
have done, coming too near the sun and thus perish- 
ing in the central heat. Only for the space during 
which one might have counted twenty, the two so 
strangely mated stood in that position ; then, with a 
simultaneous movement they drew apart, the lady 
dropping her eyes in the natural and charming shame 
of her sex, and the Continental officer, quite as much 
agitated, drawing his hand across his brow with the 
air of one who should sweep away some mist tempo- 
rarily clouding the vision. Catharine Trafford — pos- 
sibly the first, after all, to regain comparative equa- 
nimity, motioned to her companion to resume his 
seat, herself taking her own the moment that he had 
done so, and compelling full composure with a shud- 
dering shake of the magnificent shoulders, natural 
after a great chill or any strong emotion. She it 
was, too, who first recovered speech, disconnected 
with the late episode, though the struggle may have 
been a fierce one to hold the words under command. 


Perils and Delights of Ambassadors. 195 

“ I am afraid that my last remark was not quite 
finished,” she half-laughed, a blending of pathos and 
mischief seeming to flash out of the corners of her 
partially averted eyes. “Will you kindly tell me, 
colonel, what it was that I was saying — a while ago.? 
It seems very long ago, now ! ” 

“ You had just finished, madame, your estimate of 
tlie comparative danger of Horatio Gates and Charles 
Lee, as aspirants for the baton of the commander- 
in-chief,” was the reply, the voice scarcely governed 
so well as that of the lady. “And now thatp^i^ou are 
good enough to permit me to go on, I have to ask 
whether. General Lee’s complicity in the New Eng- 
land papers being out of the calculation, you hold 
him equally innocent in the incendiary documents 
circulated among — among the soldiers of the patriot 
arni}'^ ? ” 

“ Have they been so circulated, more than once, 
colonel, may I ask .? ” 

“ Only once, madame, to my knowledge ; some ten 
days since.” ■ 

“A simple hand-bill, was it not.? ” 

“You describe it exactly, madame; a hand-bill, or 
broadside, some seven or eight inches square.” 

“Dwelling on the mistakes — or rather the blun- 
ders — of the late campaign in New Jersey and Penn- 
sylvania, and attributing the whole to the command- 
er-in-chief.? Especially naming Chadd’s Ford as a 
grievous mistake, and Germantown as very near to 
a crime .? ” 

“ Quite so, madame. You describe the broadside 
so well, that it evidently must have fallen into your 
hands.” 

“ It did so, colonel. It did more — it passed through 


1 96 The Sp2ir of Aio 7 i 7 nouth. 

my hands. I can tell you precisely how many went 
into the camp, or at least how many started with 
that destination in view. There were five-and- 
twenty ; no more and no less. I burned the remain- 
ing four hundred and seventy-five, believing those 
quite enough for the effect which they really seem 
to have produced.” 

“ You, madame ! ” There was surprise in Colonel 
Vernon’s voice, and quite as much in his eyes. 

“ Yes, I, colonel.” 

“ I am pained to question you further, madame ; 
but how can I avoid doing so, in the face of your 
startling avowal? You know the origin of those 
hand-bills ; had or had not Charles Lee anything to 
do with their printing or circulation? — I may say 
attempted circulation, as so few of them seem to 
have seen the light.” 

“ Other than the fire-light, colonel ; you forget ! ” 
again half-laughed the strange political confidante. 
“ On my word of honor as a gentlewoman, neither 
General Charles Lee, or any other officer in the pa- 
triot service, to the best of my knowledge and belief, 
had anything to do with the issue of those bills, or 
even saw them except as they may have done so 
after their dissemination.” 

“ Need I say that you puzzle me exceedingly, mad- 
ame ? ” Such were the words of the officer ; and 
meanwhile, spite of himself, there was that eman- 
ating from his eyes, showing that she performed 
another operation upon him, that of delighting him 
in the very act of puzzling, to quite as eminent a 
degree. 

“Do I so? Then, as woman is said to delight in 
being a riddle, and as mystery is power, you are again 


Perils and Delights of Ambassadors. 197 

complimenting me, colonel. However, as time is 
passing and hours are limited, I must cut the knot, 
if there is indeed one. Perhaps I can give you the 
best proof of my assertion — ” 

“ Pray believe that none is needed, after that as- 
sertion ! " he interrupted, with feeling. 

“Thank you very much. Colonel Vernon, for the 
assurance,” she said, as she rose from her chair, 
stepped rapidly to a cupboard or small closet occu- 
pying one corner of the room, took keys from her 
pocket, unlocked, and produced thence a package 
c papers — no other than those received twenty-four 
hours before from the hands of Captain Anstruther. 
She brought them to the table, laid them down under 
the eyes of the colonel, and called his attention at 
once to the feature of their typography. 

“ Do these resemble the broadsides of which you 
speak } ” 

“ In size and appearance — yes. But ” — suddenly 
catching sight of the words and immediately lifting 
one from the pile and eagerly perusing it — “they 
are not the same. I have not before seen these, 
madame ! They are — ” 

“A new emission, colonel, as you will perceive, 
with additional particulars, not only reasserting to 
the soldiers the incapacity of the commander-in- 
chief, but hinting very plainly at others who might 
better fill the position. Read carefully, please, as I 
am under pledge to circulate them to-morrow, if I 
do not do so to-night; and you may wish to recog- 
nize them should you again meet them.” 

“Why, good heaven, madame ! — ” But whatever 
of surprise was intended to be conveyed in the sen- 
tence, was delayed by his reading over the paper. 


The Spur of ATo7imouth. 


198 

again and again, as if with intent to fix every word 
in his mind ; and before he had concluded, the lady 
went on with her strange explanation : 

“You are quite assured, colonel, I think, that these 
came from the same press, and probably from the 
same pen, as the others ? " 

Colonel Vernon merely nodded in reply. 

“These came to me, last night — how, you must 
not ask me to tell you, but certainly through no. offi- 
cer of your army — from a royalist press in Philadel- 
phia, and from those high in the confidence of Sir 
William Howe, whether they have or have not the 
personal sanction of Sir William himself, as I do not 
know. Seeing the origin of the one, you can not 
possibly have any doubt of that of the other.” 

“ Madame, I have no doubt whatever ! ” was the 
surprised but confident exclamation of the officer. 
“ I see it all, at a glance, thanks to you, and under- 
stand how easily one may be misled by suspicion, 
even with apparently the best opportunities forjudg- 
ing. My God ! ” — and this time it was the member of 
the stronger sex who arose and hurriedly paced the 
apartment, some troubled thought forcing him to 
that physical exercise — “so they are not content 
with bullets and ‘sword-blades, then, in seeking to 
crush out the chances of a people struggling to be 
free! — they must even use inflammatory proclama- 
tions, forging the sources from which they come, to 
turn an army into a mob and weaken what they can 
not hope to subdue otherwise I God pity the man 
whom — whom the commander-in-chief detects in 
any of these practices ! But see ! ” — and for the first 
and last time that evening, even in the midst of his ev- 
ident excitement, a smile broke over his face — “ see 


Perils and Delights of Ambassadors. 199 

after all, what a compliment these managers for King 
George pay to — to my chief! Oh, that Congress 
and the army could know this, with full proof! How 
quickly, then, would the cabal die, in the knowledge 
that the British authorities, laboring to weaken the 
patriot army, seek first to take away its head, and 
substitute some other, more easy to provoke to rash 
confidence which would destroy it, or hopeless dis- 
couragement which would disband it ! But what mat- 
ter, when all is said ? If the cause is what we be- 
lieve it, that cabal will die, and at precisely the proper 
moment : if we are mistaken, why should it not tri- 
umph and destroy us ? ” 


CHAPTER XXL 


CIRCULATING THE DOCUMENTS. 

“And now,” said Catharine Trafford, when the 
ebullition of feeling just recorded, had ceased, and 
the usually cool-headed officer was once more him- 
self, “ now to say the few more words that must be 
said, somewhat hastily ; as not even / dare keep you 
too long a prisoner here. If you have any use what- 
ever for a few of those documents. Colonel Vernon, 
pray possess yourself of them, as it is my duty to cir- 
culate the remainder.” 

“ Circulate them, madame ? Am I to understand 
that you really contemplate circulating these pa- 
pers.?” 

“Assuredly, and on my honor, colonel — every 
one of them, of which you do not take possession. 
In my own way, however, and perhaps not with 
much injury to the cause, as I have given no pledges 
in that regard.” 

Eyeing her with no little of that wonder which had 
been deepening in his glance, as he had more closely 
measured her during the past half hour. Colonel 
Vernon took a few of the handbills from the top of 
the pile, folded and thrust them into one of his 
pockets. Then the mystery of the last observation 
was solved with great suddenness. 

“ Circulate them ? Certainly, to the four winds of 
heaven and to all the elements that deal with ashes 


Circulating the Docimients. 


201 


and tinder ! ” spoke the strange woman, with an ele- 
vation approaching that of a pythoness, as she seized 
all the papers remaining, carried them to the smoul- 
dering fire, and thrust them with hand and foot into 
the midst of the ruddy coals, where they kindled for 
the moment a blaze very different from that which 
they had been intended to light in the discouraged 
hearts of the patriot soldiers. 

“Surprised again, madame, and again delighted!” 
exclaimed the witness of this summary proceeding, 
as the flash of flame leapt upward, spending its few 
moments of existence in irradiating the hair of her 
who had given it birth. “ With what interests might 
you not be intrusted? What great concerns might 
you not manage?” 

“Alas! Colonel Vernon I ” — and there was some- 
thing of unutterable sadness in the sweet brown eyes 
as she replied, while the gazer could see that the 
proud bosom heaved with agitated feeling — “ alas ! — 
how could I be properly intrusted with important in- 
terests of others, who so ill manage my own ? Stay : 
at this moment I remember that we have both been 
wandering away entirely from an important point of 
your visit. We were speaking of Charles Lee, and I 
had expressed my opinion that though by no means 
disloyal to the cause, he was dangerous. I meant to 
go further — further perhaps than becomes either 
my duty or my privilege — in advising you how some- 
thing may be done to. make him less so, without too 
closely awakening his suspicions and rendering him 
an enemy to the cause instead of a mistaken and 
often troublesome friend.” 

“You believe, madame, that you hold such a clew 
in your hands ! If so, I can only say that the coun- 

9 * 


202 


The Spur of MoJimoufh. 


try will be more largely your debtor than it is even 
now. Hold — how'ever ! Before honoring me with 
that additional confidence, allow me to decline to re- 
ceive it, in advance, if it will in the slightest degree 
compromise your own position with that officer, if it 
necessitates inflicting upon yourself a single pang of 
self-reproach when too late to recall the action.” 

“Colonel Vernon !” And the lady left her chair, 
came up to the side of the Continental officer, stood 
at his knee as a petted child might have done, and 
took one of his hands in hers, in the most simple and 
natural manner possible. “To meet with one so 
noble in soul as yourself, so careful of the rights and 
feelings of others, is a pleasure so great that I shall 
always henceforth believe the better of humanity for 
having once experienced it. You show me honor as 
well as regard — such honor,_coupled with such re- 
gard, as I have never before believed to exist on 
earth. God bless you, for both! — for I do not al- 
ways receive, in my difficult path, the” one coupled 
with the other: sometimes I have neither, w'hen I 
have done nothing to forfeit what man holds high- 
est and woman dearest. I believe that no other man 
on earth would have checked me, in my own behalf, 
as you did this moment : henceforth, you can ask of 
me nothing that I will not render to you : I would 
trust you with my life, my very soul, only less than I 
would the Maker of both ! ” 

“ Dangerous words, madame, for you to utter or 
me to hear!” — the Continental officer began; but 
he was interrupted in words as bewildering in char- 
acter as they were unexpected and indeed phenom- 
enal in their utterance : 

“No — see, I am surrendering to you the very 


Circulating the Documents. 203 

highest trust of my being. But you must surrender 
to me something, in return.” 

“To you, madame ! — to you I would give — God 
help me, I believe that I could almost give my soul, 
following your own generous devotion.” 

“And yet, see how you oblige me to ask again for 
what I crave, and it is so little ! You do not under- 
stand me — no, how could you.^ It is this: what- 
ever, henceforth, we may be before others, never 
chill me again by that cold ‘madame.’ If there is 
any beauty in the name of ‘ Catharine,’ let me hear it 
from your lips.” 

“Catharine — a sweet name, certainly, if I have 
your permission to use it,” spoke the officer, his 
tongue dwelling somewhat lovingly on the word. 
“ Have a care, however, Cathariney that I may not 
speak it too often and too warmly.” 

“I will take all the care that I ma5%” she replied, 
holding his hand as before, and neither of the two 
yielding to the temptation of renewing the caress of 
an hour earlier, which might have come so easily. 
“And now to tell you — for you must leave this room 
and this house — what you stopped me from telling 
you five minutes ago, and something else of still 
more importance to myself, though as yet it is noth- 
ing to you. Left to himself, Charles Lee will prob- 
ably continue his secret practices, wasting his en- 
ergy that might do good to the cause, if with no 
other bad result. Once made aware that he is under 
the eye of the commander-in-chief in this particular 
— in other words suspected to be plotting against 
him, I am mistaken if he does not cease doing so, 
from the very perverseness of his nature, which has 
a noble side — noble as ungovernable.” 


204 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“I trace your reasoning, mad — no, Catharine, and 
admit its force. There is no wish, be sure, on the 
part of the commander-in-chief, to drive the man 
who fought so grandly at Ticonderoga, away from 
the service. But, as you have yourself suggested, 
so much known, something must be done to check 
at least his participation in the cabal. How that 
something is to be accomplished, will need more than 
a minute's consideration — will need, indeed, the head 
of General Washington himself, whom I have gener- 
ally (not always) found to be equal to sudden emer- 
gencies. For to miss, would be to anger Lee, beyond 
doubt — perhaps to lose him at the very moment 
when we have not too many officers owning both 
valor and experience.” 

“ Pardon me, now, colonel,” answered Catharine, 

if I presume to advise you — almost to direct. I am 
confident that I have the means in my thought, and 
the necessary circumstances in my grasp.” 

“ It would not surprise me in the least, after what 
I have heard and seen to-night, to find that you held 
at the ends of these plump white fingers the plans 
of both armies, for the next campaign ! ” exclaimed 
the Continental officer, bowjng over the hand he 
held, and raising it half way to his lips, though with- 
out taking the full privilege in his power. 

“We seem to be running in circles of two days 
each,” the lady went on. “It is two da5'^s since you 
first came to this house — so little while, and yet 
how much of* life seems to have passed since then ! 
Heigho ! — that was not what I was about to suggest. 
Two nights hence — I will take care that the time 
shall be rightly arranged — advise the commander- 
in-chief, in person, to make a descent on the King- 


Circulating the Documents. 


205 


of-Prussia, say at nine at night, with such a small 
force — say qf horse — as would be fitting for slight 
service that looked for little or no resistance. You 
are sure that you quite trust me, and have no sus- 
picion of my wishing to inveigle the commander 
into an ambush and capture?” she paused to ask, 
eyeing the other keenly for that instant. 

“ Quite sure, Catharine,” was the unhesitating re- 
pl3^ with an openness of countenance which shamed 
the momentary suspicion. “ Pray proceed, and with 
due circumspection; for I shall certainly — I shall 
certainly advise the commander-in-chief to act as 
you suggest, so that your responsibility will be a 
most weighty one.” 

“ Let him then descend upon the King-of-Prussia, 
say at nine o’clock, two nights hence. Let the rea- 
son of the descent be the understanding that some 
of the enem}'-, on spy service, are occasionally har- 
boring there. The landlord being more or less a 
loyalist — remember that I am an Englishwoman, 
and so excuse my not calling him a ‘Tory’ — the 
landlord, I say, being more or less a loyalist, the 
movement will not be thought extraordinary. Let 
nothing be known of the destination, until on the 
march. Surround the house, quietly, so that no one 
can escape. If the commander should chance to 
find any of his own officers there, not quite able to 
account for being there, let him deal with them with- 
out severity, but so that they will understand them- 
selves to be under suspicion from their being found 
outside of their place of duty and in ambiguous cir- 
cumstances. The failure to find any loyalist spies 
may easily be a matter of misinformation. May I 
hope that I have made myself quite understood'? ” 


2o6 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“ Nothing could be clearer, and in my opinion 
nothing better conceived or better calculated to 
bring about the end in view,” answered the officer, 
rising, drawing his watch from his fob, and replacing 
it with an exclamation (possibly not a very reason- 
a> le one, under all the.^irL instances) at the exceed- 
ir.. : lateness of the hoUi’. 

•‘It is very late, I know it — but not yet,” said the 
lady, who^'had all this while retained her standing 
position. Pe .laps it was only natural that as he 
rose, the arm of her companion should again have 
glided around the lithe waist, though nothing of 
nearer approach followed, as Catharine Trafford 
continued : 

“One moment, and in that moment I have no less 
than two ffivors to ask. See what it is to deal with 
a woma , even in the affairs of a nation ! First, I 
have a brother in the royal service — Walter Traf- 
ford, now a lieutenant, younger than myself, nearly 
enough like me in appearance to have been my twin, 
and headstrong and reckless to a degree. I need 
not tell you that my heart bleeds at his being in a 
service which, as here employed, I detest ; but what 
can I do.? Nothing! What could any one do, per- 
haps, with myself in the same position ? In what 
daring enterprise that darling youngster may some 
day be employed, against your forces, no one can 
say. Do me the favor to possess the commander-in- 
chief with his name, and to beg for him any leniency 
in his power, in the event of his falling into your 
hands: I ask this, no matter what the circumstances. 
Am I asking too much ? ” 

Had the arm of the officer been elsewhere than 
around the waist of the lovely suppliant, there is no 


Circulating the Documents. 


207 


reason to believe that the answer would have been 
different. Being where it was, only one response 
was possible — an earnest and hearty promise. 

“ Be sure that I will do all you wish ; and I will 
answer for it that the comniander-in-chief will heed 
my request and will dv. ^r-^vthing that honorably 
lies in his power to shelter yv^ur brother, in the r^/e 
chance of such favor being necessary. Have you 
not something more difficult, in your 'second re- 
quest.^" nf 

“ No, I think not ! " was the reply, the lady draw- 
irg from her pocket and placing in his hand the 
same purse that we have seen her grinding under 
her heel on the previous evening. “ It is to take 
this, and apply it, without asking any questions as 
to its derivation, in the purchase of any comforts for 
the poor fellows in your hospitals. Wih 'pu ease 
my mind at least a trifle, by doing as I desire ? ” 

“ I will, Catharine, and God bless you for one of 
the noblest as well as one of the loveliest of woman- 
kind ! ” cried Colonel George Vernon, clasping her 
for one moment to his heart, with the embrace as 
passionately returned, — then lifting her hand once 
more to his lips, as if re-establishing the old status 
(two days old!) of friendship and gentlemanly for- 
mality, as she lighted the candle and ushered him 
down the stairway, through the room now deserted 
by the Quaker and his wife, once more out into the 
shivering but starry winter night. 


CHAPTER XXII. 


■ HUSBAND AND WIFE AT HEAD-QUARTERS. 

Among the inquiries made by Captain Anstruther, 
of Catharine TrafFord, in the interview not long since 
recorded, was one as to whether the commander-in- 
chief of the patriot army, after seeing his troops as 
well disposed of as was possible under their narrow 
circumstances, had left his marquee on the hill-side, 
and betaken himself to the more comfortable winter- 
quarters of a house in the immediate neighborhood ; 
and the answer of the lady in the affirmative, had 
been held by the British officer much the better to 
justify the allegation in the incendiary broadside, 
that Washington was additionally proving his unfit- 
ness for command, by placing himself in luxurious 
comfort, while his soldiers were suffering in huts, and 
miserable tents, and almost in unsheltered exposure. 
And yet, could the whole truth have been known to 
those intended to be operated upon by the state- 
ment, there was really little ground for injurious 
comparison on this point; for Washington, well- 
born, high-bred, and naturally luxurious (as were 
many others of the Fathers of the Revolution — 
John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson two notable 
examples from different sections) — Washington, 
with this characteristic in nature and the additional 
incitement of early belongings of the most liberal 
character, was yef specially one of those who could 


Husband and Wife at Head- Quarters. 209 

live above what many others held to be necessities. 
Very early, in the first surveying expedition over 
the Allegheny Mountains, under the patronage of 
Lord Fairfax, he had accustomed himself to rough 
riding, to hard fare, to log-pillows, to open-air en- 
campment, to nights of broken sleep and painful 
vigilance — to all, in short, which could make him 
hardier at call, whatever his natural cliaracteristics ; 
and the men of America do not need to be told, to- 
day, that he was a man of noble stature, of large and 
vigorous frame, and of a strength and agility now 
seldom blended by any except professed athletes or 
men of the hardiest experiences. In fact, all other 
capacities being granted, it is very doubtful whether, 
this one of personal physical endurance lacking, the 
Pater Patrice could have passed through, and borne 
through, the long and arduous struggle with suc- 
cess — so much is the mind the servant If not the 
slave of the body, and so certainly must any man of 
weak and nervous physical condition hax^e mentally 
as well as bodily succumbed to the strain of unend- 
ing calculation, the constant effort to make some- 
thing out of nothing and much out of little, the pres- 
sure of discouraging circumstances and malicious 
undervaluations, the wear-and-tear of weaiy waitings 
and unexpected postponements, the unrelaxed ten*- 
sion of a waiting fight needing Fabian management. 
And let no student of the man and the time, hold as 
entirely unimportant the traditions of his youth, 
which show him as leaping farther than any competi- 
tor, or those (perhaps more apocryphal) of his later 
years, accrediting him with having climbed to a 
greater height up the rugged cliffs of the Virginia 
Natural Bridge, and made a higher mark th.ere, than 


210 


The Spur of Aioiiinoutji. 


any other man of his time. The whole Washington 

— the physical as well as the mental — was needed 
in the great exigency of a continent ; and let the fact 
never be forgotten, in dealing with the men arid 
events of the past, any more than in providing for 
the welfare of the future. Little, as already said, 
could have been laid to the account of the chief, on 
the score of luxurious indulgence, had the whole 
truth of his location been known, even after, he had 
taken down his marquee, that winter, and removed 
to the house of Isaac Potts, the second of that name 
owning the Forge in the Valle)'-. Among the numer- 
ous head-quarters now or lately standing in the dif- 
ferent States from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, 
and accredited with having been hallowed by a 
longer or briefer sojourn of the commander within 
their walls, few have been less pretentious than that 
of Valley Forge, 

Unquestionably among the most interesting of the 
buildings occupied by Washington during the strug- 
gle, and only yielding, if at all, to that from which he 
went forth to take the command of the army at Cam- 
bridge, and which has since grown doubly hallowed 
by the residence there of the first of American poets 

— the head-quarters at Valley Forge fortunately re- 
mains intact, though built upon by later possessors; 
so that any of the swarming thousands of the Cen- 
tennial may at once pay it a pilgrimage and verify its 
belongings. The building was in 1778 of substantial 
stone, not more than eight or ten years completed, 
and of so small a size as to afford only two rooms, 
each of less than fifteen feet square, on the ground, 
while the chambers above were necessarily few and 
limited. Over the principal door, fronting north- 


Ilusbcvid and Wife at Head-Quarters. 21 1 

ward to the Schuylkill, a small carved portico-roof 
seemed to have been promised the support of two 
columns, never supplied. Soon after the occupa- 
tion by the commander-in-chief, a small addition of 
logs was thrown out eastward, for the domestic pur- 
poses of the household ; though that has long since 
disappeared and been succeeded by a wooden build- 
ing of greater size and convenience. The location of 
the house has already been indicated — at very near 
the Schuylkill, immediately east of the junction with 
that stream of the Valley Creek, and occupying 
really what might to be called the northwest cor- 
ner of the whole encampment proper. Southward, 
behind it rose the Valley Range; southward and 
eastward stretched the tents, huts and earth-works 
of the patriot army ; west of it, and commanded by 
the west windows, ran the insignificant creek ; and 
beyond that stream, half a mile distant from the 
head-quarters on the Phoenixville Road, stood the 
principal hospital, so limited and insufficient, of the 
suffering army. 

Within, no more of luxury was visible than prom- 
ised by the plain exterior ; and very different were 
the surroundings amid which Martha Washington 
found herself, among the snowy mountains and val- 
leys of Pennsylvania, from those to which she had 
been accustomed in her married home at Mount 
Vernon in milder Virginia. 

Entering the house at the front, the visitor pass- 
ing a few feet through a narrow and ill-lighted hall, 
entered at the right into the front apartment of the 
mansion — that especially occupied, during that 
memorable winter, by Mistress Washington. Some- 
thing less than fifteen feet square, this apartment 


212 


The Spur of Monmoidh. 


had but' two windows, both in the front and looking- 
out over the frozen Schuylkill. The western end, 
that opposite the door, was filled by a large fire- 
place in the centre, with paneled wood-work above 
the mantel, and a closet on either side, with round- 
headed fanlight surmounting each. No door opened 
from this room into the rear apartment, which needed 
to be entered from the hall, like the front, though by 
a door farther back and beside the narrow stairway 
leading up to the sleeping-chambers. 'Within, this 
rear or second apartment was found to be nearly a 
duplicate of the other, though a trifle less elaborate 
in paneling, and with the addition of specially deep 
window-ledges, the bottoms of which had been in- 
geniously turned into hidden chests or coffers for 
the bestowment of private papers or valuables. An- 
other difference was also visible, between the two 
apartments: in a narrow door leading out to the 
western side of the house, — and in the presence of 
a huge box stove, of German extraction and clumsy 
pattern, bearing the rudest of ornamentation in low 
bass-reliefs of Scriptural subjects, some plates being 
even now preserved, and one of them showing the 
turning of water into wine, at the marriage supper of 
Cana, in a coarseness of imagination, and a very 
childishness of drawing, which must often have 
amused the fine taste of the careworn commander, 
in hours of leisure permitting such observation. 

Into the first of these apartments, late in the morn- 
ing of the second day following the second visit of 
Colonel George Vernon to Cedar Grove, the wintry 
light shone on the figure of the wife of the com- 
mander — she who shared so notably not only in his 
glory, but in the halo of aristocratic dignity generally 


Hushajid and Wife at Head- Quarters. 213 

surrounding him, as to have borne, in nearly all 
mouths, during and after his Presidency, the anti-re- 
publican title of “ Lady Washington.” 

A lady who has borne, perhaps, as much of celeb- 
rity in history, as any one throughout the ages, not 
personally compelling the regard of mankind by the 
exercise of absolute genius. A true and loving wife, 
through more than forty^ years of union with the 
man of her second choice, and winning her highest 
meed, as some conservative thinkers still believe 
that woman must ever do, in sharing and upholding 
the glory of the husband, instead of making a sepa- 
rate and independent effort for the wreath of honor. 
And one to whom republican America as republican 
America, perhaps owes more for having failed to 
bear a man-child to George Washington than for any 
other deed or default of her life ! 

An anomaly in many regards — as is, perhaps, 
nearly every character of note, as seen by any single 
eye. Proud, to the very fullest extent of that power 
in womanhood ; and yet in a certain sense unassum- 
ing and even retiring. A literal “ queen of society ” 
in her fair youth, and again and even more mark- 
edly so in the years of the Presidency ; and yet nota- 
bly domestic and seeming better pleased “among 
her maids ” at Mount Vernon than when surrounded 
by the distinguished persons and the open homage 
of the “ Republican Court.” Defiant of public opin- 
ion as it reflected on her warlike husband, in flaunt- 
ing the white-and-scarlet liveries of her postillions, 
and requiring her four or six horses in hand, in hasty 
journeys to and from the camps where that husband 
quartered ; and yet as chary of that husband's repu- 
tation, and as severe in enforcing the full measure of 


214 


The Spur of Mo7i77iouih. 


respect to it, as could have been the most habitually 
careful in the other regards. Proud of her noble 
mate, and confiding in him to an extent rare even 
with the most submissive of wives ; and yet jealous 
of him (the fact is only partially known, and may be 
widely disputed by those who believe all early his- 
tory as written) ! — jealous of him as could have been 
the weakest of her sex, dealing with the least reliable 
of the other. 

Sitting in her own apartment, already described, 
that January morning, the wife of the commander-in- 
chief was busied in the apparently hopeless task of 
instructing a young female negro servant, kneeling 
at her feet, in the art and mystery of making stitches 
less than an inch in length, in some article of per- 
sonal apparel upon which the colored girl was en- 
gaged. Both the teeth and eyes of the latter were 
gleaming whitely, in rival attempts at showing stu- 
pidity in understanding and wondering admiration 
of the mistress, who literally knew everything. Sit- 
ting thus, Martha Washington, well and even richly 
dressed in the costume of the time and her position ; 
her hair, with very few touches of gray, rolled into 
what might have been called bunches on her well- 
shaped head, and crowned with a small cap of fine 
lace rather displaying than concealing it — the lady, 
thus observed, showed a face that had never been 
truly handsome, and yet that must have possessed 
much attractive grace in those days of reigning belle- 
hood at Williamsburg, before Colonel Custis bore 
away the prize of her hand from many competing suit- 
ors. Before something of the firm plumpness of youth 
had gone from the cheek to be supplied by the fat- 
tier fullness of matronhood, — and before the mouth. 


Husband and Wife at Head- Quarters. 215 

whose firm lines and determined set might then have 
been merely piquant, had grown to be a trifle threat- 
ening in its assertion of self-will and its possibility 
of proud petulance. Exceedingly well preserved, and 
in that fine physical health more likely to remain 
with the childless than the childbearing, after five- 
and-thirty, in America — she yet looked fully the ten 
years in addition to that age, which she had num- 
bered ; and it may be said that at that virtual transi- 
tion time of her life, she gave little promise of that , 
almost second youth which came to her perhaps in 
the fulfillment of a pride beyond even her early 
hopes, when her noble husband was the first Presi- 
dent of a new-born nation, and when the most dis- 
tinguished of the period, of both sexes, gathered 
around her as around a virtual queen, in the already 
cited “ Republican Court ” of that Presidency. 

While she was thus engaged, a tap sounded on the 
door leading from the hall ; at a word of recognizing 
permission it opened, closed again, and George 
Washington stood within the apartment. 

No man of American history so little needs de- 
scribing, to American readers, as the Father of his 
Country; for, while none holds so exclusive and 
enviable a place in universal regard, none other of 
her heroes has been so often and so successfully pic- 
tured in word and drawing, during the hundred 
years of the Republic. This not only from his fame 
and the regard borne him, but materially because he 
was physically and to the outer eye a noble object, 
as not all have been who filled eminent place in the 
thought of a people. And yet something more of 
brief description may be attempted, as from the eyes 
of those who saw him at and about that momentous 


2i6 


The spur of Monmouth, 


period when he had reached the culmination of his 
powers as well as the strongest need of their exhibi- 
tion. 

Five-and-forty years of age at this time, it might 
truly be said of the commander-in-chief, that in him 
was fully exploded the old fallacy of the maturity of 
man at the half-way house toward three-score-and- 
ten. For nothing of the physical any more than of 
the mental, had as yet decayed or weakened, in that 
man of rarely balanced strength. Probably at that 
day, though he might not have been able to display 
the extreme agility of his twentieth year, he could 
have borne any ordinary fatigue with less con*scious- 
ness of physical outlay, and less drain upon the sys- 
tem, than at the earlier stage of life ; and many years 
were to pass befbre the first exhibition of that de- 
cline in bodily power, carrying him to an honored 
grave one-and-twenty years later, on the very verge 
of the nineteenth century. 

Precisely at that perfect stature of six feet, which is 
the envy of most above it as of all below it, Wash- 
ington was stouter of figure, at that juncture, than 
has come to be the ordinary impression with refer- 
ence to him — both Trumbull’s and Cogniet’s pic- 
tures, the best known of the full-lengths, showing 
him in the costume and with the surroundings of 
that special period, but with the face and figure, 
which came to him some years after the close of the 
Revolution, when the gray had declared itself in 
hair and whisker, and when the insidious disease 
which eventually ended a career intended to reach 
to at least eighty, had begun to thin the frame by 
destroying the more abundant tissues. Without a 
suspicion of superfluous flesh,' the commander would 


Husband and Wife at Head- Quarters. 217 


that day have turned the scale at nearly or quite a 
stone beyond the two hundred — this weight so well 
distributed as to relieve the belief in its existence, 
and possibly to deceive the eyes of the painters as 
well as those of others. 

Markedly proud as well as grave was that remark- 
able face — the nose at once long, as beseemed the 
strategist, and of Roman tendency, without being 
sharply aquiline, as became the man who would fight 
well and to the death, but never from his own seek- 
ing — the mouth very firm and closely set except 
when momentarily relaxed — the eyes dark, widely 
set, and calm almost to severity — the whisker little 
more than a continuation of the hair at the temple, 
and scarcely touched with gray — the plentiful hair 
carefully queued, ribboned and worn with a slight 
dash of powder — the whole contour that of a man 
eminently handsome in youth and with scarcely one 
winning feature lost in middle-age. Of this pleasing 
impression, meanwhile, no one but felt that much 
was due to the erect carriage, which seemed to blend 
the highest dignity with courtesy, and no small pro- 
portion to the art and habit of dressing well under 
any and all circumstances, which the cares and 
duties of the commander could not destroy or mod- 
ify in the opulent Virginia gentleman. 

Though comparatively in the privacy of his own 
abode, the general would have seemed, at that mo- 
ment, arrayed for any eye possible to look upon him 
— the abundant ruffles at wrist and bosom, equally 
fine and well cared for; the small-clothes of buck- 
skin, with white hose terminating in silver-buckled 
shoes ; the waistcoat of buff kerseymere with bright 
buttons, though neither very long flapped nor orna- 
10 


2i8 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


merited, as was then so common ; the watch shown 
by heavy seals dependent below the vest ; the coat 
(as necessary for one at any moment liable to be 
called upon by some officer on duty) blue, turned up 
with buff at wrist and lappel, high in standing collar, 
heavily epauletted on either shoulder, and closed by 
two or three buttons at the breast. Such was the 
costume of this hour within : such would be the cos- 
tume, later, of official duty or review without, with 
the high spurred boots replacing the low buckled 
shoes, and with the dark blue surtout or cloak ren- 
dered necessary by the winter air, the modest, un- 
plumed cocked hat, and the straight-bladed sword 
with a couple of silver tassels forming the only orna- 
ment of hilt or scabbard. 

Mere glimpses, these, of the Man of Men and the 
lady to whom he owed fealty. Cold and lifeless lay- 
figures, so far ; but with a certain interest, when it is 
remembered that they are shaped and clothed from 
the recollections of those who looked upon them in 
the flesh, at a day when the one was literally (under 
God) holding the destinies of half the Western 
World, — and when the other was proving, perhaps 
not less nobly, her right and her duty to watch over 
the domestic comforts of the man bearing that 
weighty responsibility. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

REFERRING TO NIGHT-ENTERPRISES. 

It was the bow of a gentleman to a lady, on enter- 
ing her presence — not that curt and half-contempt- 
uous recognition which has in later days become too 
much the habit with those who believe that “famili- 
arity ” should breed “ contempt,” — with which Wash- 
ington saluted the mistress of the apartment, as he 
closed the door ; and it was a nod of pleased welcome, 
only less stately than his own greeting, with which 
the lady received the visitor from that extreme dis- 
tance, the rear room, following the motion with a 
word to the colored servant (who lived, by the way, 
nearly eighty years thereafter, and died only a score 
of years ago, well accredited as one of the old in- 
mates of the Washington household); 

“ Essie, a chair for the general.” 

“Thank you, no — this is a standing call, not a sit- 
ting one,” replied the commander, pleasantly. “And 
yet Essie may do me service, all the same, as I have 
a partially military errand, and am levying forced 
contributions.” 

“ Indeed ! ” exclaimed the lady, with a well-simu- 
lated surprise in her tone, while Essie, too much in 
awe of master and mistress to giggle in such a pres- 
ence, grimaced at what she comprehended to be a 
pleasantry without understanding one word of it, 

“ Yes,” pursued the general, “ Montaigne has un- 


220 


TJie Spur of Mon7nouth, 


accountably disappeared, and I am led to believe 
that he has taken refuge in this room, where I chance 
to know that he has before been harbored, against 
the rights of his lawful owner, on occasion.” 

“As your weight and age are both more than my 
own, general, I must consider myself overawed by a 
superior force, and therefore yield to necessity,” re- 
plied the wife, adding the order for surrender : “ Essie, 
the general’s book — ^the large one, with red leathern 
cover, from my chamber — quick ! ” 

The girl disappeared on her errand, with a celerity 
showing rigid discipline ; and the general, coming 
closer to his wife and indeed standing in the warm 
radius of the blazing fire, pursued the conversation 
in a somewhat more earnest tone and manner : 

“ I promised you a report from the hospital ; and I 
have a report thence this morning.” 

“Ah, the poor fellows! Yes! I hope, general, 
that you can tell me of at least some abatement of 
the fevers,” 

“ Of the fevers, yes ; of the general sickness, I am 
sorry to say, no. If there was any infection, I be- 
lieve that it has been rooted out, by the sharp frost 
and the care taken by the surgeons. But the debili- 
tation — ah, madame, how shall we root out that, 
with so few kinds of nourishing food at our com- 
mand, and with the discouragement of inaction af- 
fecting the strength as well as the spirits of every 
invalid ! My God ! ” — and for the moment the com- 
mander ceased to be the calm and self-possessed man 
so constantly seen by the world when in communi- 
cation with it, and the breath of pained and half- 
heartbroken feeling came laboring from his manly 
chest as he covered his brow with his broad hand, in 


221 


Referring to Night-Enterprises, 

contemplation — “ my God ! — it can not be that all is 
to be for nothing, at last — that Valley Forge is to 
be set down in future history as the grave of the con- 
federacy, less than two years after its birth ! ” 

“ General ! ” 

There was marked surprise, and almost severity, in 
the tone. Martha Washington rose from her chair 
and stood proudly erect, for that instant undeniably 
prouder than the proud man whose name she bore. 
Had she been a bride of five or ten years, instead of 
one of nearly twenty, and had something more of 
young blood run in her veins, no doubt she would 
have done that which comes so naturally to the wife 
when she sees her husband in suffering; approached 
him closely, thrown her arms around him, and sought 
to build up, in a loving caress, the confidence for that 
instant faltering. As it was, she but became for the 
time the Genius of America, more outraged than 
grieved by the doubt, as she repeated her previous 
word, with a significant addition : 

“General, you surprise me ! ” 

“Do I so, madame.^" The general’s hand came 
down from his face ; and whatever of softness there 
had been in that face, changed as he continued after 
a moment of pause : “ Well, I do not wonder that you 
say as much ; sometimes I am surprised at myself. 
But I am more ashamed than surprised, at having 
brought this face to you. Especially when I am 
obliged once more to throw myself on your gene- 
rosity.” 

“Upon my generosity, general?” The lady re- 
seated herself, as she spoke ; and the strict privacy 
of interview between the husband and wife came to 
an end, as Essie returned with the missing Montaigne, 


222 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


found with more difficulty and delay than her mis- 
tress had anticipated. 

“Yes. I promised you revenge at chess, night 
before last, and was not able to keep my appoint- 
ment. Last evening, as you are aware, I was pre- 
vented by an important consultation. And to- 
night — ” 

A jealous woman might have found material for 
the building up of her pet foible, in the momentary 
hesitation which he made, with the sentence uncon- 
cluded — a pause which Martha Washington filled. 

“ And to-night, general ? * You do not hold another 
council to-night, 1 presume?” 

“ No, madame,” — and the voice of the commander 
echoed a little of that hardness which a quick ear 
could detect in the tone of the question — “no, I 
have unexpected service for this evening, which may 
take me away for some hours ; and that it is which 
disappoints me quite as much as yourself.” 

The lady made an even longer pause than her hus- 
band had done, before she replied. 

“General,” she said, after that pause, “are you 
quite sure of what you are doing ? ” 

“As nearly so, madame, as poor fallible mortality 
can be, in a dark way, that has never been trodden 
before ! ” was the reply, with a concentration in the 
tones showing forcible suppression. 

“You command the army, general, not I,” re- 
sponded the lady, with the slightest softening of her 
voice from its late utterance* “And j^et, while I 
have no right to advise 5'’Ou as a military man, I may 
presume to do so as a husband.” 

“ With one word omitted, madame, you would cer- 
tainly have a right to do so.” 


Referring to Night- E 7 iierprises, 223 

“ And that word — may I inquire ? ” 

“A word which should never have place in any 
conversation between you and myself. You may 
advise, without ‘ presuming,’ ” 

“ Ah — well. I was about to remark, then, general, 
that to a weak woman’s fancy, you are subjecting 
yourself to serious exposures — bold, if not impru- 
dent — hazardous, even if necessary; some of them, 
one would think, really the taking upon yourself of 
what might properly be done by officers of less rank 
and value to the country and to me,” 

Something in the last expression evidently touched 
the heart of the listener; was it the one word with 
which she had concluded } He came nearer, laid his 
broad hand on the matronly shoulder of the comely 
woman before him — then lifted one of her hands and 
kissed it, with a world of courtly and feeling dignit5^ 
“ You ought to have been long enough the wife of 
a soldier, now,” he said, “ not to frighten yourself and 
him by overstrained fancies. But I understand you, 
I think. You knew — I scarcely meant that you 
should do so — of my riding with only a single or- 
derly, the other evening; and you could not know, 
as I now assure you, that I was going into no possi- 
ble danger.” 

“ Are you sure, general ? ” 

There was a strong emphasis upon the penulti- 
mate word, though the question was asked in a tone 
of marked kindness. And that emphasis brought a 
flush of color to the brow of the general — one so 
evanescent that it passed away before any eye could 
well have caught it, had even an e5^e been observing 
him with close attention. His reply, however, was 
an assurance for the future, if no defense of the past. 


2*24 


J 

The Spur of Monmouth. 

“ Leaving that as an open question, in your mind, 
madame, though it is not so in mine — you will agree 
with me, I think, that for this night, with a full 
squadron at my back, and without going five miles 
away from head-quarters, I shall not be periling 
either myself or the service materially.” 

There really seemed to Martha Washington a grat- 
ifying guarantee of safety in this information, or 
some other feeling influenced her pleasantly; for the 
matronly face, which had been not a little troubled 
throughout most of the conversation, lightened up 
wonderfully. Any further conversation, however, 
was cut short by the clank of a sabre without the 
door, the rattle of the sentry’s musket as he pre- 
sented arms to an officer, and then four distinct raps 
on the panel without, marking the coming of some 
member of the general’s military family. 

Passing out into the hall as the officer entered, in 
time to receive him and accompany him into his own 
severely furnished apartment, the commander-in- 
chief was only a moment or two later seated there, 
with the new-comer standing before him, exhibiting, 
both in face and figure, many of the best attributes of 
the soldier. Some five years older than Washington, 
Lachlan McIntosh, with his round face, from which 
seemed to have passed away none of the smooth 
lines of boyhood, and with his piercing yet sunny 
eyes of intense darkness, seemed undeniably the 
younger of the two, while in a widely different way 
he produced upon the spectator an impression much 
like that of the other — of one who could be trusted 
as a thorough man under all circumstances, and de- 
pended upon to the death. 

Not of those destined by the inscrutable fates to 


Referring to Night- Enterprises. 225 

any marked distinction, the Scot was one of those 
combining much of the chivalric and romantic in tem- 
perament, with great power of usefulness to others, 
and a self-sacrihcing willingness to use that power 
under all circumstances, which might have made him, 
in another age, one of the subjects of minstrels’ lays 
and noble ladies’ high praises. A son of John More 
McIntosh, of Borlam, one of the most powerful 
chiefs of the Clan Chattan, ruined in the rising of 
1715 for the Old Pretender — Lachlan, then only a 
mere lad, had accompanied his father and brother, 
with General Oglethorpe, to Georgia, in 1736, and 
there resided until the calling home of that general 
by the British government, to take part in the cam- 
paign against Charles Edward Stuart, in the second 
and more fatal rising of 1745. With his brother, he 
had made the attempt to win back to Scotland, con- 
cealed on board the very ship carrying the royalist 
general, in order to prove his Jacobite blood and 
feeling by linking his fortunes with those of the 
Young Pretender; with his brother he had been dis- 
covered and turned* back by the generous Ogle- 
thorpe, thus only, it is probable, avoiding the bloody 
death which his reckless bravery would have brought 
him on Drummossie Moor, or a less glorious exit 
from life at the hands of the executioner. A friend 
of Henry Laurens, at Charleston, thereafter, he had 
been among the earliest of the Southern leaders in 
resistance to the royal authority — no doubt finding 
in this opportunity to oppose the House of Hanover, 
something to atone for that lost in the attempt to 
do so more perilously on his native heather. Early 
a colonel and then a brigadier-general in the Geor- 
gian service, he had illustrated the old feudal blood 


226 


The Spur of Mo7i77ionth, 


of the Clan Chattan by falling into feud with some of 
the other leaders ; this culminating in a duel, in May 
of the previous year, with Button Gwinnett, president 
of the Georgia council, and a rival for the brigadier- 
generalship — in the death of his antagonist, and his 
own wounding and temporary disablement. That 
fatal event had driven Lachlan McIntosh from the 
South — his own disgust, be it said, the principal 
element in his removal, as his conduct in the affair 
had been fully vindicated, and that of Gwinnett con- 
demned, in seeking to place a subordinate officer 
over his head, in the expedition against Florida, as a 
salve for wounded personal vanity. 

Joining the central army while in the Jerseys, 
McIntosh had been warmly received by Washington 
from the first, that acute judge of men and capacities 
early discovering at once the ability and the probity 
so much needed. Already he had rendered services 
— many of them, at that day, better understood by 
the commander than by those who surrounded him, 
from the fact that they involved the carrying out of 
his most secret and personal instructions, for which 
the born Scottish chieftain proved himself so spe- 
cially. fitted, — and some of them, of no slight im- 
portance, never explained by either during life-time, 
and thus never entering into the history of the con- 
flict. One thing is generally known with reference 
to Lachlan McIntosh, at that period, and one thing 
only : that in the task of watching Sir William 
Howe, at Philadelphia, throughout the encampments 
at Whitemarsh and Valley Forge, no man bore a 
more arduous share than he, and no man more fully 
enjoyed the confidence of his great superior. 

“ There is no especial difficulty in what I desire 


Referrbig to Night- Enterprises. 227 

you to do, General McIntosh, but the utmost care is 
necessary,” Washington was saying, at the moment 
when the two are discovered, the commander sitting 
in his favorite attitude of the legs crossed, and the 
arms lying upon the two arms of the chair; while 
the subordinate stood, cocked hat in hand, very near 
him, his old-boy face aglow with pleasure and inter- 
est, and his intensely dark eyes shining as they had 
a habit of doing when he saw that in advance which 
peculiarly agreed with his own fancies. 

An unforgotten touch of the birr dwelt upon the 
tongue of the Scot, as he replied, giving to Wash- 
ington that name which he alone of all the army 
would have dreamed of personally using to him, but 
which at the same time expressed his fullest and 
truest devotion : 

“ Yer wull shall be my law, chief, just that and nae 
mair, as ye well ken, gin you’ll be guid enough to 
mak it plain to my thick heid.” 

“ I am well assured of that, general, always,” was 
the reply of the commander. “ Not of the thickness 
of the head — rather the strength of it — but of the 
faithful care and close discipline which render your 
co-operation always so valuable.” 

It scarcely belongs to this narrative to record so 
much ; but many a day thereafter, when Lachlan 
McIntosh was very old, encompassed by the clouds 
of his later life, his warlike occupation gone, the 
“chief” of his reverent regard passed away to rest 
before him, and himself trying in vain to build up 
his shattered fortunes on those wasted lands in the 
Georgia wLich had known his active youth — many 
a day, then, the memory of those words of praise, 
uttered on that special occasion by Washington’s 


228 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


lips, came back to him as the full compensation for 
all that he had suffered and sacrificed , and many a 
time the old warrior referred to them with pardonable 
pride and satisfaction, as conveying a nobility quite 
as dear as could have been conferred by his darling 
Charlie Stuart, Culloden won, and the Stuart king 
holding his levees in Holyrood. But to return to 
the explanations and the instructions then and there 
given by the commander-in-chief, and so carefully 
listened to by the man of the Clan Chattan. 

“ What follows. General McIntosh, for yourself 
and yourself only, until my orders to the contrary. 
Three squadrons of horse, for near service, at sharp 
eight, to-night. You may take them from Wilson’s 
and Gregg’s brigades, as they are well mounted. In 
column of fours, beyond the bridge, facing south, 
yourself in command, with two majors of the troops, 
there to wait for further orders. I shall myself ac- 
company the detachment, but do not choose that 
the fact shall be known in advance. Destination, 
the King-of-Prussia, all the neighborhood of which 
you know perfectly, and all the outlets of escape 
from which, without further orders on that point, 
you will see to having effectually stopped on ap- 
proach. Am I thoroughly understood?” 

“ Right w'eel, chief — naething could be plainer. I 
onnerstand what you will, and nae mair. Three 
squadrons frae Wilson and Gregg, at aught sharp, 
ayont the brig, for near service and so wi’out bag- 
gage. Onything mair, chief? ” 

“ Nothing more. General McIntosh ; to-night at 
eight,” was the answer of the commander, rising as 
he spoke, with the high courtesy of his habit, while 
the Scot bowed low in the very act of saluting, and 


Referring to Night- Enterprises. 229 

was gone from the apartment and the house with 
singular celerity. Left alone, the man of many cares 
and a nation’s destiny sank back into his seat for a 
moment, his arms again along those of his chair, and 
his eyes dwelling, without seeing them, on the quaint 
bass-reliefs of the old German stove. Then he rose, 
shook himself as if throwing off some thought that 
had been for the moment oppressive ; drew from the 
corner where they sat by the window, his heavy long 
boots, and assumed them ; took down from the pegs 
in the paneling where they hung in due order, his 
modest cocked hat and the straight-bladed sword 
which had waved in his steady hand when he rode 
between the two lines of fire at Princeton ; from yet 
another peg withdrew a heavy long cloak of dark 
material ; drew it close around him and passed out 
through the low side-door, locking it behind him, to 
the wintry air and the snow without, on that side of 
the head-quarters overlooking the Valley Creek. 

It would have been evident, to any one convers- 
ant alike with the orders lately given to Lachlan 
McIntosh, and the suggestions made two days earlier 
by Catharine Trafford to Colonel George Vernon — 
that the commander-in-chief had laid no little stress 
upon the communications made to him by that offi- 
cer and confidential agent, and that the lady’s ad- 
vice was to be acted upon with a vigor threatening 
serious results to any conspirators harboring in the 
suspected neighborhood. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PRAYER OF VALLEY FORGE. 

Few incidents in the life and action of Washing- 
ton, while at the head of the Army of Independence, 
have been oftener related or more depended upon as 
furnishing a reliable key to the inner depths of his 
character, than the “ Prayer of Valley Forge.” And 
yet nearly a century has passed since the utterance 
of that prayer, without the circumstances surround- 
ing it being fully understood, and without its being 
generally known who were the more important wit- 
nesses to that act of dependence upon the Divine 
Will, on the part of him who felt himself so in need 
of the Almighty direction. 

In the accounts of the winter at Valley Forge, this 
paragraph, or something very like it, will ordinarily 
be found : “ How seriously the responsibility of the 
struggle at that period weighed upon the comman- 
der-in-chief, may be discovered through an occur- 
rence during that encampment. Passing through a 
thicket, one day, a man named Isaac Potts, residing 
near the head-quarters, had his attention arrested by 
the sound of a human voice, apparently in pleading 
tones, within the shelter of the trees. Anxious to 
know what this supplication in such a spot could 
mean, he made his way carefully nearer, and peeped 
through the branches for the purpose of discovery. 
What was his surprise, when sufficiently near to ob- 


The Prayer of Valley Forge. 


231 


serve the place and the speaker, to see that it was 
Washington, kneeling on the ground in the covert 
of the trees, with his hands clasped and his tearful 
eyes raised to heaven, pouring out anxious supplica- 
tions for his periled country, and for wisdom to 
guide its destinies out of the path of danger ! Awed 
and impressed, the observer stole away without 
alarming the kneeling suppliant, and returning to 
his home, answered the inquiries of his wife as to the 
meaning of his absorbed manner and downcast looks, 
by the impressive words ; ‘ Now I know that the 
cause of the patriots must triumph ; for I have just 
seen a spectacle the most remarkable in all history 
— Washington kneeling in prayer for his country, 
with the tears running down his cheeks and his 
voice broken by emotion. Surely the man and his 
cause are blessed of heaven, and they must prosper.’ ” 

Such is the accepted record, which nearly every 
reader of revolutionary history will remember. True 
in the main, that record is incorrect in so many 
particulars, and so defective in others, that the time 
is full ripe for stating the truth with reference to 
it, as derived from those who were at that junc- 
ture within the full opportunity of ascertaining the 
facts involved, if not within sound of the alleged 
voice of supplication. 

It was under no tree that Washington knelt: the 
merest trifle of reflection would suggest that he must 
have been unlikely to do so, at midwinter, and in 
the snow, which for all that period covered every 
foot of ground in the neighborhood of the Schuyl- 
kill. Such men as Washington, of whatever time, 
do not utter their orisons aloud, outside some place 
of recognized worship, and where there is equal pos- 


232 TJie Spiir of Monmouth. 

sibility of their being overheard and misunderstood. 
No one can say that Isaac Potts may not have seen 
the kneeling commander, as certainly others saw 
him, with very different eyes from those of the owner 
of the head-quarters. But that he heard him is cer- 
tainly not true ; and that the succeeding scene, at 
his house, is entirely imaginary, is evident from the 
two facts that at that time Isaac Potts was a widower, 
and that more than such a spectacle would have been 
needed to convert to any assured belief in the patriot 
cause, one who regarded it from his point of view. 
It is time, as already said, that the truth of this 
memorable scene should be recorded, whatever the 
record may suggest as to the burthen of those sup- 
plications which the Father of his Country undoubt- 
edly then and there uttered, in that most impressive 
utterance only reaching the ears invisible. 

It was something past noon on the 17th of January 
of that memorable year, that two men crossed the 
bridge over the Valley Creek, descending toward 
the Schuylkill and their quarters from a visit just 
paid to the invalided troops in the hospital on the 
road half-a-mile toward Phcenixville. Both wore, 
half hidden under the heavy cloaks protecting them 
from the winter cold, the uniform of general officers ; 
and yet both were among the very youngest in the 
service (with the single exception of Alexander 
Hamilton), enjoying such high commands as their 
epaulets proclaimed. In feature and bearing, except 
for a certain manly pride in each, no two could have 
been more dissimilar ; while probably in the whole 
army no two more affected the society of each other. 
The elder of the two — something more than thirty 
years of age — was by far the handsomer, though far 


The Prayer of Valley Forge, 


233 


less likely to catch the feminine eye oftenest appeal- 
ed to by grace and manhood. He was tall, fulh 
figured, with something German in the cast of coun- 
tenance, the nose markedly long and a little aquiline, 
the eyes very dark, sad and almost pleading in their 
expression, and the mouth a veritable cupid’s-bow of 
tender, pensive kindness, long afterward remember- 
ed and commented upon by those who fought at his 
side and under his command, as completing the most 
lovable of manly faces — one that inspired confi- 
dence almost in a moment, and held it with a tenacity 
not common to those impressing others so quickly. 
This officer, whose portraits have- often been mis- 
taken for those of Washington, though much hand- 
somer than his superior, and much younger when 
brought into intimacy with him — was General Peter 
Muhlenberg! one of the most marked figures, in 
some other regards than his physical presence, of all 
those who took part m the great struggle. He it 
was who, while “parson of Woodstock,” in Virginia, 
had taken early part in the resistance to British 
claims, in 1774, been chairman of the Committee of 
Safety of his county, held a seat in the House of 
Burgesses, and finally presented a spectacle of in- 
terest not often matched in history, by preaching a 
farewell sermon to the people of his charge, announ- 
cing that “ there was a time to pray, a time to preach, 
and a time to fight ; that the latter had come, and he 
was about to change his line of duty to the field,” 
ending by throwing off his surplice, showing the 
uniform of a colonel beneath it, and descending the 
Lutheran pulpit stairs to order the drum beaten, the 
muster-roll read and filled, and his regiment mustered 
for active service, within that hour, and at the very 


234 


The Spur of Mon7nouth. 


door of the church ! He it was who had thereafter 
served so faithfull}'- in the South, then risen to the 
command of the Virginia line, and stood beside 
Washington from Middlebrook to Germantown, 
proving that he fought quite as well as he prayed, 
and necessarily winning among the rough and gra- 
phic talkers of the army the inevitable name of the 
“fighting parson,” while no man could say that he 
had ever brought disgrace upon the cloth thus sum- 
marily abandoned. 

The still younger man, who walked that day beside 
Peter Muhlenberg, and who proved his personal 
habits to be a trifle less hardy by keeping his cloak 
drawn more closely around him than was that of the 
Virginian, — was one of those rare mortals destined 
to shed almost equal lustre on the history of two 
continents — to be of great usefulness and immense 
influence in both, and to win the applauding verdict 
of the world through circumstances offering many 
temptations, presenting many difficulties, and likely 
to wreck the probity of any except the most stead- 
fast, Scarcely more than one-and-twenty years of 
age at that time, — of moderate stature and slight 
figure, with (like his companion) the nose very long, 
but depressed above the nostrils, and then rising 
suddenly and sharply at the end, giving a sort of 
bird-air, which suggested the word “perky;” with 
the eyebrows naturally raised high, as if always in 
readiness for the peculiar shrug of the French ; and 
that feature, and the head thrown well back, creating 
some impression of vanity and much of open-eyed 
quick observation — such, with hair always a little 
elaborately curled, a wealth of ruffles at the throat, 
the Cross of St. Louis on his lappel, and his whole 


The Prayer of Valley Forge. 235 

array in marked fashionable contrast to that of the 
sober-habited Muhlenberg — such was, at that junc- 
ture, Gilbert Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the truest 
and most heartful of volunteers in the cause of 
liberty, the noble whom the lettres de cachet of a king 
could not turn from his purpose of aiding America 
with sword and purse, and the man who had been 
fortunate enough to marry, in the person of the 
Countess Anastasie, daughter of the Duke de 
Noailles, a helpmate who could aid him with wealth 
and impel him forward to the field of honor by her 
self-sacrificing counsel. 

It is well, perhaps, that we do not always foresee 
the consequences of our own actions; so crippled 
might be the hand of activity, if we did so without 
the circumscribing influences of our mortality ! For, 
in the light of succeeding events, and in view of the 
number of instances thereafter, in which Lafayette, 
in his own land, was to be called upon to stand be- 
tween the people of his own blood and the demons 
of disorder and anarchy, for which the claim was 
always made that they had their origin in the carry- 
ing back to France of revolutionary and republican 
principles .by the French officers and soldiery who 
had shared in the struggle of American liberation — 
could the generous young noble, at that hour, have 
been gifted with the faculty of foreknowledge, who 
can say whether he might not have considered the 
risk far beyond the duty, withdrawn that helping 
hand and that influence so necessary, and left the 
Land of the West to whatever fate it could accom- 
plish through its own unaided valor? No such gift 
was his, however ; not more could he foresee, on 
that January day of 1778, the awful kaleidoscope of 


236 


The Spur of Mo)imouih. 


1789 to 1793, the Day of Confederation, the Bonnet 
Rouge, or Olmutz, than he could look forward to 
1824 and his return as a demigod to the country he 
was then assisting to free, or 1830 and the time when 
he was once more and for the last to stand between 
an unstable people and a second Reign of Terror. 

There was one bond of fellowship between the 
young Frenchman, then only a few days returned 
from the North and the abandoned preparations for 
the new expedition against Canada, and the Virginia 
officer who had been with the army throughout all 
its late operations — one bond, of no little strength, 
and yet only understood by those who thoroughly 
knew both. Lafayette, never a good Englishman in 
the use of language, had not the^i, as yet, shaken off 
the more declared idioms of the Gallic tongue ; and 
few officers of the army spoke the French so well as 
Peter Muhlenberg, whose long residence on the 
continent of Europe, before his ordination, had 
made both that and the German nearly as natural to 
him as his native English. Lafayette, as is well 
known, affected the society of the elder, on that ac- 
count as well as from personal liking ; and they were 
often together when the exigencies of the service 
allowed. 

Crossing the little bridge over the Valley Creek, 
that day, the two had temporarily forgotten both 
place and time, and were deep in a conversation, in 
French, on the literature of that language, — the 
young Frenchman having, so to speak, gone home 
to his own loved land, and the other willingly accom- 
panied him. Forming the corner of the road, as it 
turned down the creek toward the Schuylkill, stood 
a barn, with the yards belonging to it — at some little 


The Prayer of Valley Forge. 237 

distance from the head-quarters, but appertaining to 
it, and used by the commander-in-chief for stabling 
his favorite white horse, and one or two other ani- 
mals of his stud. Among the horses then in the 
stables, was a fine brown, lately the property of 
Washington, but within a few days presented by him 
to Lafayette, on his return from the North, and not 
yet removed to the possession of the latter. It 
chanced that General Muhlenberg had not yet seen 
the animal ; and Lafayette invited him, as they ap- 
proached the barn, to enter and view his valuable 
acquisition — an acquisition, by the way, which he 
retained throughout the war, in full efficiency for 
service, and spent no inconsiderable sum to have 
taken in safety to France when his labors of love in 
America were ended. 

Conversation between the companions had drop- 
ped, as they came nigh the door of the barn ; and it 
was not resumed as Lafayette laid his hand on the 
door and opened it. As he did so, the door making 
literally no noise, the winter light streamed full into 
the lean-to connected with the stable, and for one 
notable moment revealed a spectacle which, de- 
scribed improperly and with singular distortions, has 
been the subject of narration and admiration over 
the world for an entire century. There it was that, 
in that instant’s glance, they saw the Father of his 
Country kneeling, on some of the hay thrown down 
from above for later supply to the horses — the cloak 
cast back from his noble figure, his hat lying beside 
him, his hands clasped and raised to heaven, and his 
closed eyes looking upward as only the eyes of 
faith and Christian confidence can do, to the Father 
of Light, whose presence is no surer in the temple 


238 


The Spur of Mon7nouth. 


than the hovel — nay, whose well-beloved Son had 
his place of earthly nativity in a stable sheltering far 
humbler animals than those of this place and pres- 
ence. 

No spoken word was issuing from the lips of the 
suppliant — at that moment, whatever might have 
been the case at some other spot and season. The 
closed eyes evidently saw nothing earthly — not even 
the light streaming suddenly in — as the closed ears 
as evidently heard not the opening of the door. The 
face, as Peter Muhlenberg sometimes spoke of it, 
later, was grandly sad and sorrowful, seeming entire- 
ly wrapped in awful contemplation of human weak- 
ness and that eternal might which could alone sup- 
plement and make it able to do its duty in the world. 
Not one of the seers or prophets of old had ever 
been more thoroughly carried away from mere imme- 
diate surroundings — more completely engrossed in 
the highest office and privilege of humanity — than 
seemed the hero at that memorable moment. Who 
shall say (though many have taken upon them- 
selves to say), what formed the burthen of that 
voiceless but most earnest prayer? That in it was 
embodied such a supplication for his periled coun- 
try, as few lips have ever uttered, the man and his 
surroundings alike contribute to prove. That there 
was also embodied an agonized appeal for personal 
guidance from above, in the task which at that junc- 
ture may have seemed beyond the ability of any 
mere mortal, is not more to be doubted : without the 
certainty of this, George Washington would not have 
been George Washington, and the history of the 
United States of America would have needed to be 
far differently written. But what more? Who shall 


The Prayer of Valley Forge. 239 

say what more ? Who shall guess what more ? Were 
there other clouds and shadows wrapping heart and 
brain of the hero, at that stage of his existence, than 
even those involving the fate of his beloved land? 
Were there other strengths necessary, and so recog- 
nized, than those which should make him wise in 
council and invincible in the field? Once more — 
who shall say? So it was that the physical fact of 
the Prayer of Valley Forge came to human knowl- 
edge : we may well leave the subject of the prayer 
to the destinies hearing words in the silence and 
either answering or denying them. 

All this, to the sight of the two spectators, occu- 
pied but a moment. It would not be truth to say 
that Lafayette shut the door on the instant ; some- 
thing outside himself held eye and hand until both he 
and his companion had fully taken in the scene and 
comprehended its purport. Then, gently and si- 
lently as he might have drawn the scarf over the 
face of a sleeping babe, the young French officer 
closed the door, and the two stood looking into each 
other’s faces, without. Not a word, even then — not 
a word until, by mutual consent, they had retraced 
their steps through the narrow yard, to the road, 
and were turning once more in the direction of the 
Schuylkill. Even then, the words to be put upon 
record with reference to it, were few, but how preg- 
nant with meaning ! Spoken, like those last preced- 
ing them, in French, they have their place here, in 
their English rendering: 

“ He is a wonderful man — the commander ! ” — the 
exclamation of Lafayette. 

“The spectacle is a sublime one; it fills me with 
shame while it inspires me with new faith and hope ! ” 
the reply of Muhlenberg. 


240 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“ As haw, general ? ” the inquiry and the glance 
accompanying, evidencing surprise. 

“As thus, marquis ! I descended from a pulpit to 
assume arms : George Washington, in the midst of a 
warlike profession, ascends higher, and more near to 
God, than my pulpit. It is well for the cause — for 
hhn : but as for me — do you not understand that it 
shames me ? ” 

“ Shames you, general ? Not so. Pardon me if I 
say t instead, it should make your pride the 
highe as showing that prayer and the profession of 
arr are not incompatible, when the prayer is earn- 
est id the cause is felt to be just! Think once 
more, general ; am I not right ? ” 

“You are right, marquis!” warmly grasping the 
hand of the other. “ You are right, and I thank you.” 

“ I am not of your faith, general, or of the com- 
mander’s, as you know,” was the reply, with the 
grasp of the hand warmly returned. “ But all faiths 
meet together, here. Duty is noble ; prayer is yet 
nobler. In my country I sometimes fear that they 
have half forgotten to pray. When they quite for- 
get, the good God keep them from themselves ! ” 

“Amen! — But let us hope that such a time will 
never come — there or here ! ” said the Virginian. 

“Yes, let us hope so, general. But who knows.? 
I trust that the commander did not see or hear us — 
that we did not disturb him. Pesie on the horse that 
should have led me into the danger of doing so ! No 
— that is not well; for what I have seen I shall 
never forget, and I would not forget it if I could.” 

“Nor I, marquis — be sure.” 

No — both were right in the assertion. Peter 
Muhlenberg never lost the memory of that scene, 


The Prayer of Valley Forge, 


241 - 


or quite forgot the feeling of that moment, in the 
later days of the war or the honorable occupations 
following it. And did Gilbert Motier, Marquis de 
Lafayette, when his fearful alternative prophecy had 
been proved sooth — when a whole nation not only 
forgot prayer but denied God, and throned a courte- 
san as the Goddess of Reason and the proper ruling- 
power of the universe? 


II 



CHAPTER XXV. 


THE BRITISH WINTER IN PHILADELPHIA. 

Occasional glimpses have already been caught, in 
historical and other recitals, of the British in Phila- 
delphia, during that single winter which they were 
permitted to spend in the Quaker City, in contradis- 
tinction to the long period which, as is well known, 
they more or less enjoyed in the city of New York. 
But any picture of the time and the events distin- 
guishing it must remain signally incomplete, without 
some attempt at bringing the incidents of that winter 
in the city on the Delaware more closely to the 
attention of the reader — the personal relations of 
men of that day being again materially depended 
upon, though the pen of the historian and the pencil 
of the illustrator have done more to preserve the 
salient features of that occupation than almost any 
other period of the Revolution. 

Beyond a doubt, before the entry into Philadel- 
phia, the British officers, of whom a large proportion 
are always connected with the nobility or the gentry, 
the army at that time supplying rather an exempli- 
fication of the rule than an exception to it, — had 
begun to be somewhat sickened of the long campaign 
“among the savages,” as many of them designated 
the employment in America. They had enjoyed what 
might be called the “run” of the one large city of 
New York, as already shown, for a long period ; but 


2 'he British Winter in Philadelphia. 243 

the truth must be told in saying, that they had never 
found it materially to their taste, the average feel- 
ing of the inhabitants being unmistakably rebellious, 
and the fairer half of the population, especially, so 
pronounced in their devotion to the patriot cause, 
whenever not deterred by absolute fear of ill-treat- 
ment for such an expression, that the beaux of the 
royal army habitually found it difficult to enter favor- 
ably what could be called the highest classes of so- 
ciety, and were obliged to waste their devotions and 
their protestations on those who, under other cir- 
cumstances, would have been passed as far beneath 
the loyal notice. Not that this was universal — 
only general! New York owned many loyalists of 
wealth and position ; but they were so far outnum- 
bered by those of the same class of patriotic tenden- 
cies, that the fashionable atmosphere of the captive 
city could not be otherwise than unpleasant and 
threatening in the main. Ever, frorii the first day of 
occupation, the fact seems to have been recognized, 
that a steel spring of patriotism lay beneath the re- 
pressing hand of royal power — that, that hand once 
removed, the spring would assert itself almost on 
the instant, in demonstrations the reverse of loyal — 
and that, whatever the beauty of the women of the 
city already then the commercial capital, and the 
convivial tastes of hiany of their fathers, brothers 
and lovers, the declared loyalist who moved among 
them was always treading over a mine of uncer- 
tainty, which might at any moment work effects the 
most disastrous. It may be traveling beyond the 
record to say so much ; but the Empire City of this 
day, grown from the New York then not yet entirely 
emancipated from its old traditions of loyalty, has 


244 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


ever retained some of the same features of uncer- 
tainty as to the bias of its citizens at any given mo- 
ment, socially or politically, — of doubt as to what 
may be the line of conduct assumed within the 
briefest of succeeding periods. 

It has before been said that no such uncertainty 
seemed toexis^ with reference to Philadelphia, where 
the patriotic sentiment was either far less general or 
far less declared, spite of the leaven necessarily dis- 
seminated by Franklin, Morris, Rittenhouse, Read, 
and their many and worthy confreres, in forming the 
early public opinion of that colony, now become one 
of the States of the Confederation. How much of 
the calmness with which the second city of America 
allowed herself to lie beneath the hand of the con- 
queror, could be credited to the tenets of the Society 
,of Friends, habitually disposed to endure for the time 
without any open manifestation of disapproval — 
how much of it could be ascribed to an actual sen- 
timent of loyalty to the old government, the new 
as yet only an experiment, with scarcely flattering 
results — how much was the effect of the late royal 
successes, with few advantages on the part of the 
patriots to counterbalance them, and with absolute 
reason to fear that the long effort to overthrow the 
authority of the mother-country might, after all, 
prove to be a disastrous failure, — how much each 
of these feelings, with others more markedly ex- 
hibiting self-interest, may have had to do with the 
general fact, it is as yet too early, or possibly already 
too late, to decide. But the fact existed, that during 
the occupation of Philadelphia by the royal army, 
far less of discomfort was experienced, and far less 
of an openly hostile atmosphere was encountered. 


245 


The British Mwter in Philadelphia. 

than seemed continually to be met in that New York 
built to baffle calculation. A strange problem, per- 
haps, and one only to be solved through a close 
study of geographical and military surroundings, — 
that the city which appeared so quiet under the con- 
quering hand, should only have been held for a few 
months, with little or no advantage even in that 
retention — that the troublesome and disloyal city 
should have been held for as many years as the 
other occupation numbered of months ! And yet 
what history, and especially what warlike history, is 
not full of such anomalies } 

Not that the occupation was all elysian : the sur- 
roundings of no hostile army, in all history, have 
been so. We have already heard of false alarms and 
false calculations — of weary marches that promised 
everything, to accomplish nothing. We have seen 
already, how genuinely red was some of the blood 
flowing through the else-cool veins of the Philadel- 
phians. There was more than one Lydia Darrah, 
to whose laborious and self-sacrificing patriotism 
there is no need to call renewed attention. And 
Mary Pemberton can not have borne a character 
much more savory in loyalist nostrils, however 
noble the stock from which she came — seeing 
that, as highly objectionable to the ruling powers, 
and so to be punished as well as reprehended, her 
coach and horses, among the finest then in the city, 
were seized by Sir William Howe, and kept for his 
own use during the occupation, that commander 
making something of a boast of riding in public in 
the confiscated conveyance. 

Not an elysium, Philadelphia, that winter of 1777-8. 
No. — For history will not soon forget the Provost 


246 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


Prison, on Walnut Street, near Sixth, used by the 
infamous Provost Captain Cunningham for the in- 
carceration of the patriots taken at Brandywine and 
Germantown, to whom it would appear that he 
labored to make their prison a worthy rival to the 
New York Sugar-House, in privation and cruelty, 
and many of whom, to quote burning words that 
have since been uttered by a careful authority, “ died 
of starvation, after feeling the lash of Cunningham’s 
whip, or the force of his heavy boot, and were buried 
in the Potter’s Field near by, now the beautiful 
Washington Square.” 

Not an elysium, either, in the matter of freedom 
from annoyance, however little effect such annoy- 
ance may ultimately have had upon the national 
cause. The world has thus far known but one 
“ Battle of the Kegs,” deriving its title from the 
facile fancy of the author of the poem of that name, 
Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Decla- 
ration of Independence — but for some hours of that 
January night no jest to the British, whose vessels 
were threatened by the kegs of burning combus- 
tibles sent floating, down the river, and all whose 
marksmanship was ludicrously devoted to their anni- 
hilation. 

And yet, as already said, Philadelphia, during the 
few months of its occupation, was undoubtedly by 
far the pleasantest place of sojourn known by the 
royal army during its whole career in America. It 
came nearer to quiet, during that time, than any 
other place had been, when similarly situated. It 
had much wealth, only a small proportion of which 
the fleeing patriots could possibly carry away. It 
..was surrounded by the richest agricultural country 


The British Winter in Philadelphia. 247 

of the Middle States, whence, with whatever diffi- 
culty, supplies could he more easily drawn than 
from any other section. While thus backed and 
supported by a wide fertile region, it had the river, 
the bay and the sea within reach, enabling all land 
operations to be covered by the movements of the 
royal fleets, except when the ice closed that channel 
of communication in the mid-severity of winter. It 
offered unexceptionably comfortable residences, 
from many of which the patriotic proprietors had 
fled away after Germantown, for the occupancy of 
the commander-in-chief and his officers — and far 
better facilities than any other city of the continent 
could have afforded for the disposal of the common 
soldiery. And of no secondary consequence, at 
least to the titled and the epauletted, who (let the 
truth be told in their favor as against them) dawdled 
so naturally in peaceful hours while they fought so 
well on occasion — though a large proportion of the 
patriotic wives of the city had accompanied their 
husbands in fleeing before the advance of the victo- 
rious arm3^ not a few of the indomitable and the 
doubtful remained ; and there was no lack of the 
youth and beauty of womanhood, for which the 
Quaker City was already celebrated in that day, as it 
remains to the present. 

Touched, of course, with that peculiar tinge in- 
evitable to the festivity of the conquered, Philadel- 
phia was yet unmistakably gay during the winter of 
the British occupation. Theatrical amusements, 
somewhat defective in a public sense, were notably 
well supplied by the officers of the royal army, many 
of whom had won no limited triumph on the ama- 
teur stage in the land of their nativity. Foremost 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


248 

among the performers, and eminently conspicuous 
‘as the writer of any needed interlude or desired 
alteration, was Captain Brevet-Major John Andre, 
who largely, in that way, became among the best- 
known of the royal officers, even by those who 
would else have recognized him but indifferently. 
Balls and routs were of frequent occurrence and 
careful preparation, the attendance compounded, as 
always under such circumstances, of the three great 
classes — those who were pleased with the presence 
of the army, and made no scruple to show their 
devotion to the then momentarily predominant in- 
terest ; those who considered it the part of policy to 
seem pleased at festivities that really galled them to 
the quick with their omen of the British success and 
the patriot misfortunes ; and those (always a large 
proportion in any community strongly divided in 
sentiment) who cared little or nothing for one cause 
or the other, and who were ready to welcome any 
entertainer who furnished lights, music, and the 
moderate indulgences of the festival supper, without 
any effort or expenditure required of themselves. 
In the days long after, when the violence of revo- 
lutionary rancor had measurably subsided, and when 
it was much to be able to boast having shared in the 
events of that memorable time, without too close in- 
quiries being made into the political position then 
held by the participant, — many a vaunt was made, 
by belles whose tresses began to be blended with 
the gray of advancing age, of having shared in the 
entertainments of 1777-8, given so freely by Sir Wil- 
liam Howe and his officers, as never again were any 
given by those bearing arms for the same power, on 
the soil destined and consecrated to freedom. 


The British Winter in Philadelphia. 249 

But, bright and boastworthy as were those recol- 
lections in the general, recalling them in the after 
days, to none other could the participants look back 
with the same pride, as to having shared in the mad 
extravagance of the Mischianza, the most gorgeous 
of the royal entertainments, as literally the last, and 
in some regards, even up to this day, unparalleled 
on the western continent. No other social event, 
during the Revolution, equaled it in oddity, and it 
may be said that no other approached it in the 
audacious splendor of many of its appointments. 

This festival, of which the very name, if it had any 
meaning, conveyed the Italian idea of a mad and 
irresponsible revel, was held in the stately Wharton 
Mansion, standing on what is now Fifth Street, in 
the neighborhood of the Navy Yard, on the day and 
night of the i8th May, 1778, in honor of Sir William 
Howe, then on the eve of departure for England, 
and his brother, Earl Howe, the naval commander 
— no dream, even then, in the mind of either, that 
another “ departure,” little less than a flight, was so 
soon to be made by the brilliant officers who took 
part in it, and by the army itself, away from Phila- 
delphia, across the Jerseys, for New York and at 
least temporary safety. Decades were yet to elapse 
before the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, at Brussels, 
and the booming of the guns of Waterloo; and the 
poet who was to make that scene immortal was yet 
far from the date even of his birth. But “ history 
repeats itself,” as we have long ago learned by axiom 
and example ; and the instances have not been rare 
on its pages, of the wildest revelry forerunning the 
saddest and most solemn earnest to those who 
shared in it. 

II* 


250 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


Six months of inaction and necessarily lax disci- 
pline, had not only loosened the morale of the body 
of the British army, but produced no less effect upon 
the officers, sharers in the more pronounced of the 
dissipations of a time which tolerated the insertion 
of grossly immoral and indecent advertisements in 
the public journals, shamelessly published by those 
wearing the epaulettes of the royal service. And it 
may well be believed, that when the announcements 
of the coming event spread abroad throughout the 
city, and the elabojate ball-invitations, designed by 
the hand of the ever-active Andre, reached the fa- 
vored fingers of those who were to be sharers in the 
night-festivities, the human material for the revel, 
so prepared, was found in glad readiness for the oc- 
casion. Beyond a doubt, the Swiss-Briton, in whose 
letters we have 'one of the fullest descriptions of the 
event, was in his highest pride on that day-of-days 
and night-of-nights ; beyond question, the placid 
satirist, Sir John Wrottesley, enjoyed one of the 
most glorious of his many opportunities ; and equal- 
ly beyond cavil, the stately Sir William, well satisfied 
with America, and content to return with his already 
gathered laurels to the land of his birth, was all the 
better satisfied to do so, and to leave future opera- 
tions in the hands of his “ short, fat friend,” Sir 
Henry Clinton, with this splendid farewell evidencing 
the supposed estimation in which he had been held 
by those under his command. 

Into the details of the Mischi'anza this chronicle 
has no call to enter, though its mention was unavoid- 
able as one of the features of the special time tra- 
versed by it. By day it was a regatta, most oddly 
and yet luxuriously appointed, on the Delaware, with 


The British Whiter in Philadelphia, 251 

its rallying-point very nearly at what is now the foot 
of Vine Street on that river, followed by a tourna- 
ment, in a neighboring square, with the fantastic 
given full rein in sham knighthood and mock war- 
fare. By night it was the maddest of revels, in the 
old Wharton Mansion, continuing the blending of 
the modern and the antique, in the appointments of 
the ball-room, and the use of the chivalric jargon of 
the tournament in the names of knights and ladies, 
enrolled under the somewhat singular divisions of 
the Blended Rose and the Burning Mountain. 

Ah, well — long since the glories of the Mischianza, 
alike of the wave, the lists and the ball, have faded, 
in the flight of nearly one hundred years and the 
close-following defeat of those who conceived and 
conducted it. There is a certain interest, to-day, in 
recollecting that the chosen lady of the doomed 
Andre, on that occasion, was a Miss Chew, of the 
family giving name to the old stone house so fatal to 
the patriot army at the battle of Germantown — that 
his squire was his younger brother, then but a strip- 
ling of nineteen, afterward knighted by King George, 
as a concession to the services of the family — and 
that among the ladies prominent on the occasion, 
was Miss Margaret Shippen, daughter of the royalis- 
tic Edward Shippen — believed to be the object of 
Andre’s special devotion, in late-arrived forgetfulness 
of the lost charms of Honora Sneyd — afterward to 
become the wife of Benedict Arnold, the intermedi- 
ary of the British oflficer’s connection with Arnold’s 

1 treason, and literally his fate and doom. 

‘ Closing here this hasty general reference to the 
“ British winter in Philadelphia,” as it became known 
in the verbal calendar of the men of the Revolution- 


252 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


ary time, there will be immediate occasion, once 
more, and in connection with 'it, to meet Margaret 
Shippen, credited with being the temptress of the 
great treason, and John Andre, made a hero by mis- 
taken history in the belief that he was led blindfold 
into the black circle of the guilt of Arnold. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

SHADOWS OF 1780. 

In speaking of the Mischianza as nearly con- 
cluding the British occupation of Philadelphia, 
necessarily a considerable advance has been made 
in point of time, beyond that so far reached in the 
regular course of this chronicle, which does not 
extend further than the middle of January, 1778. 
Two reasons have induced the introduction of that 
special festivity, in the paragraphs lately preceding 
— the desire to restore the atmosphere of the time, 
as nearly as possible, in dealing with men who took 
such leading part in it, and the necessity of relating, 
with reference to the Mischianza itself, certain cir- 
cumstances now almost or quite forgotten, and yet 
of so startling a character that they deserve to be 
retained vividly in recollection. It is quite possible, 
too, that the relation is inevitable, as due to the 
truth of history, and possibly capable of correcting 
an impression which would seem to be erroneous 
as sensational. 

Intimations that the fate of Major Andre, one of 
the chief actors in the Mischianza, in the Arnold 
treason of 1780, had been foretold to him, long in 
advance of that period, through instrumentalities 
unexplainable if not supernatural — these have not 
been wanting, at different times during the century 
gone by since the falling of his doom. But it is 


254 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


only truth to say that they have generally been 
disregarded, if not ridiculed — the theory of “com- 
ing events ” casting “ shadows before ” in the shape 
of prophetic visions more or less misty, being held 
untenable by the world of stern reasoners. How 
much of intrinsic truth, meanwhile, may lie in the 
idea, is one of those questions which the hard rea- 
soners will not settle, during the whole progress of 
terrestrial time, to the satisfaction of all others than 
themselves ; and something more than a vague im- 
pression may exist, in the minds of those made 
aware of the allegations connected with the career 
of the unfortunate Swiss-Briton, and who do not 
discredit the plainly recorded word of Holy Writ 
as to spectral possibilities existing in the far past, 
— that he may have been among those whose fatal 
fortunes so darkly clouded the curtain of the fu- 
ture, that even finite eyes could see some glimmer 
of the awful truth casting the dark shadow. 

Ay, possibly they may go a step further, and be- 
lieve that such a reversal of the ordinary laws of 
nature governing the human senses, took place 
more than once, in the course of a career else- 
where considered to have been alike exceptionally 
brilliant, moderate opportunities considered, and 
exceptionally unfortunate in the light of successes 
once won and favoritisms once so firmly estab- 
lished. 

In an English magazine of distinguished though 
ephemeral celebrity, bearing date some quarter of 
a century since, was given a relation of an event 
said to have occurred at the residence of a friend 
of Miss Anna Seward, a minor poetess, daughter 
of a clergyman at Lichfield, in England, and cousin 


255 


Shadows of 1780. 

to that Honora Sneyd to whom Andre had held 
so tender an early attachment, previous to her 
marriage to Richard Lovell Edgeworth, of Edge- 
worthstown in Ireland, father of Maria Edgeworth, 
the novelist. 

According to that relation. Major Andre, on the 
point of departure for his post with the army in 
America, made a visit, by arrangement, to the home 
of Miss Seward (where, by the way, he had years 
before met and become enamored of Honora Sneyd), 
to see the wonders of the Peak of Derbyshire, and 
to be introduced, at the home of the latter, to one 
Newton, whom she playfully designated as “ her 
minstrel,” and to one Cunningham, a curate and 
also a minor poet. The two gentlemen, waiting 
the arrival of their guests (according to the legend), 
fell into conversation, shaped by the abstraction of 
the curate, and in which he stated that during the 
previous night he had dreamed two dreams of 
some person unknown to him, bearing a most 
tragic significance if any weight could be attached 
to them. In the first, -he had found himself in a 
forest, altogether unknown to him, seen the unre- 
cognized person, a horseman, riding down one of 
the roads toward him, at speed — then suddenly 
stopped by three men, who searched his person 
with every evidence of hostile intention, and led 
him away captive to what impressed the dreamer 
as his probable death. Awoke by the agitation of 
the dramatic and dismal event, he had fallen asleep 
and dreamed again, to see the same captive pacing 
a scaffold, and many thousands of people with 
upturned faces, in the neighborhood of some great 
but unrecognized city — then to see the execu- 


256 The Spur of Monmouth. 

tioner perform his ghostly office and the rider and 
captive of the wood hanged outright ! Still follow- 
ing the relation of the magazine — this strange 
story had scarcely been told by the curate Cun- 
ningham to Newton, and the wondering but in- 
credulous shudders over it duly indulged, when 
Miss Seward arrived with her companion, and the 
blind wonder of the. curate and his auditor was 
changed'into a shuddering horror beyond the power 
of expression, at the discovery that the horseman, 
the captive, and the victim of the gallows-tree, 
bore the face, figure, and whole conformation of 
the departing young soldier, John Andre, before 
that time never seen by the curate ! 

This narration in the English .magazine, it is 
necessary to remember, was given to the world 
only some five-and-twenty years ago, when the 
leaves on which had been recorded the much more 
startling omens of the night of the Mischianza, 
were yellow and almost crumbling with age. Had 
some eye, undreamed of by the possessor of those 
leaves, looked over them at some point of the 
long period of nearly three-quarters of a century ? 
— and had the unsuspected discoverer of what was 
believed altogether hidden, entirely changed the 
locality of the spectral warning, widely varied the 
circumstances, and, thus altered, given the singu- 
lar omen to the world? or must we believe that 
twice, in the career of a man no more distinguished 
than John Andre, the powers of the invisible realm 
had taken note of his strange, sad fortunes, and 
manifested the truth that was to be, in their fatal 
earthly ending, to the sleeping and waking brains 
of persons otherwise entirely indifferent to those 


Shadows of 1780. 


257 


fortunes? With a thousand other problems belong- 
ing to that world of shadows which has so large a 
percentage of skeptics, but so firm a clientelle of 
believers, this question will probably always con- 
tinue unanswered ; it only remains to record what 
the most truthful of human lips have given us as 
occurring on the night of the Mischianza, bearing 
upon this most solemn and w.ondrous possibility of 
the supernatural. Only a trifle modernized, and 
changed in no important particular, the words are 
those of him through whom, so to speak, the un- 
explainable mystery passed — words written down 
from his own lips, half a century since, on that very 
paper long ago so yellow and half-illegible, before 
the narrator went away to die in that home-land 
which had always held his most ardent devotion. 

“ It must have been nearly four o’clock in the 
morning, on that occasion of almost crazy splendor 
that I have never yet seen equaled,” said the ven- 
erable narrator of this most remarkable episode of 
the Mischianza, “when I grew tired of dancing — 
something that did not come very early to us young 
bloods in that day, you may be sure! — and went 
into one of the side-rooms leading off from that 
grand hall all hung with flags and festooned with 
flowers, that seemed to have no end of itself and 
was made twice as long by what must have been 
half the mirrors in Philadelphia. I was thirsty, I 
was a trifle hungry, and more than a trifle ex- 
hausted. Supper had ended, hours before, but there 
were viands, cakes and wine on the long tables of 
this room, as of nearly a dozen of others. I intended 
to lounge in one of the chairs for a few minutes, 
drink a glass of wine and nibble a slice of cake, 


The Spur of Monmo^dh, 


258 

before returning for the keraus (last dance), that 
would carry us well on to broad daylight, that late 
in the spring, and with the days already lengthened 
so materially. 

“ In that room, at the time, there happened to be 
no servants ; as scarcely any one was to be expected, 
needing service. The lights were down a little, too, 
I think, or they may have been merely burning low 
at that late hour. I poured a glass of Madeira from 
the nearest decanter, took a slice of half-crumbled 
cake from a basket, and a bit of meat from a partial- 
ly emptied plate, and dropped into a chair very near 
the table, to rest me while 1 ate and drank. The 
distance to the ball-room was considerable, but no 
door was shut between, and the music and the sound 
of the dancers’ shuffling feet came in almost as 
plainly as if they had been but a few feet away. I 
mention this circumstance to show that I was in no 
specially quiet or retired place, fitted for grave 
thought and ghostly contemplation, out of which 
may grow, I suppose, anything that one will. Mean- 
while, if the tread of feet was not musical, it kept a 
sort of time to the music, which was doubly pleasant 
at that distance ; and I remember thinking that I 
was honored, like his Majesty, with melody to aid 
my digestion. I mention this, again, to show that I 
have a very acute and perfect recollection of every- 
thing around me at the moment — something that it 
may be as well to keep in mind all the while. 

“Well, my eatables were nearly finished, and my 
glass of Madeira nearly enough so to make me think 
of the necessity of getting up to pour out another — 
when a light step came down the passage-way and 
approached the table. I looked up, and saw that the 


Shadows of 1780. 


259 


new-comer was Captain Andre, who certainly had a 
right to eat and drink on that night, if any one, as 
much of the arrangement, of the day as well as the 
night, I understood, was of his devising, and much 
of the drawing, and some of the painting and hang- 
ing, they said, had been done by his own hands. 
Rare skillful hands they were, as all of us knew who 
had had any share in the entertainments of that 
winter; and a rare man he was, altogether, in a 
queer way that often puzzled people, but generally 
pleased them, I think. 

“Andre was not handsome. He was bright-look- 
ing, however, and that goes for quite as much. His 
eye was often a little sleepy, and he looked down too 
habitually. He was rather short than tall, but well 
shaped ; and his purple velvet and white satin dis- 
played his figure to good advantage. Then his face, 
ordinarily a trifle sallow, was flushed -by dancing, so 
that if not handsome he looked almost so, for the 
time — very bright, and remarkably well in place in 
any such blending of light, color and music. 

“ I remember that I rose from my chair and 
bowed, as I recognized him. Nowadays, such an 
amount of ceremony has gone out. Never mind — 
I doubt if we were any the worse for it. Andre re- 
cognized me, and bowed in return. Then he saw my 
half-empty glass, took it from my hand, with another 
of those bows which had never been made in our 
stiff old England, refilled and handed it back to me, 
filled another'for himself, and dropped into a chair 
within three or four feet of me, evidently to do what 
I had been doing — to rest and refresh himself. 

“ I have already said that there were plenty of 
mirrors in use that night. There were not less than 


26 o 


The Spur of Mofimouth. 


three in that room, and I suppose the other retiring- 
rooms had quite as many. Behind Captain Andre, 
as he sat, there was one very large pier-glass, set so 
low that it showed nearly to the floor. This, too, it 
will be found necessary to remember, in order to 
understand what followed, if that indeed can be 
understood on this side of the river that I am now 
about to cross before many years — not till I get 
home, I hope : home in old Hampshire ! 

“Well — to proceed. We sipped our wine, the 
two of us, pleasantly and a trifle chattily, for the 
captain had always a word on occasion, as became 
his Swiss-French blood — he was no Englishman, 
really, as you no doubt remember. Then there was 
an interruption. Steps again came down the pas- 
sage, and the steps of more than one, with the rustle 
of silks accompanying. More people tired of dan- 
cing, and requiring a glass of wine and a crumb of 
cake, I remember thinking. A moment, and I saw, 
as they came out under the light and approached the 
table, who the new-comers were. A lady and a gen- 
tleman. Let me tell you, first, who was the gentle- 
man. Captain Cathcart, son of Lord Cathcart, and 
himself the Earl only a few years later. He had 
been one of the knights in the tournament, but 
wandered away from the lady of his devotion, at 
that late hour, and his round boy-face was all aglow 
with the pleasure of having danced — how many 
times I do not know — with one of the most fascinat- 
ing, if not one of the handsomest, of all the ladies 
present. And the lady — in her personality you will 
discover something of my reason for telling you this 
long story, which no other man alive, probably, could 
tell you, and which you would not lose for a trifle, 


26 i 


Shadows of 1780. 

when you know all. Well, the lady was Margaret 
Shippen, whom you have learned to curse — I do not 
say that you have not had. something of a right to 
do so — as Margaret Arnold. 

“Tall, stately and proud-looking, the lady who 
was to marry, only a year later, Benedict Arnold, 
whom you execrate, and whom those who are not of 
your way of thinking do not over-admire. She had 
a profusion of blonde hair, and wore it, as they used 
to say, all over her head — fluffed, so to speak, and 
generally without any powder, when nearly every 
one else wore it. She was remarkable, too, for never 
w^earing a patch, when patches were universal. She 
had fine eyes — or would have had fine eyes, had 
they not been so proud, and at the same time so 
restless. 

“ 1 do not need to tell you that the brief descrip- 
tion I have just given you of Miss Shippen was not 
derived from the sight I had of her at that moment 
and the few minutes following. No ; were I to draw 
from that, probably the picture might be very differ- 
ent, as you will by and by understand, I had known 
her for some time, however, as one of the leading 
belles of Philadelphia, and much better liked and 
more trusted by the young officers of the army than 
she might have been had her father not borne the 
reputation of being privately well affected to the 
royal cause. I had known her very well, and yet 
our acquaintance had never gone much beyond the 
point of merely saluting w'hen we met. In fact, 
beautiful as she was, and attractive as every one 
knew her to be, I did not like her — had an indefin- 
able impression that she was heartless as well as 
haughty — something that I should not admit if I 


262 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


wished my story to be graphic, instead of making it 
strictly correct, — as it may throw some suspicion 
upon the clearness of my physical and mental eye- 
sight during the few moments that followed. 

“You will know, without telling, that Andre rose 
again from his chair as the lady and her escort entered 
the room and approached the table. He was well 
understood, in the city, to have been in love with her 
— possiblyto.be so still — at least as much in love as 
a man could be, who had left the best of his heart in 
Engk d, as everybody said that he had done. I was 
ver^* hat, if he had been so attracted by her, 

an. small encouragement (as everybody 

said, too), he had not been entirely cured of his 
fancy ; for, I certainly saw his cheek flush a little 
additionally as she entered ; and there is no doubt 
that after-events showed the continuance of a cer- 
tain intimacy which may have had a lingering love, 
on one side, at the bottom. Her proud face did not 
flush at all — I am quite as sure of that as of the 
other. She merely returned his salute, as did her 
companion ; and as Andre reseated himself, the two 
late-comers drew to the edge of the table, still stand- 
ing, and Captain Cathcart poured a glass of wine for 
the lady, and another for himself, ^nd the two trifled 
with some morsels of food. 

“ My attention was drawn off from the three, for a 
moment, by a change in the music; and when I 
again observed them, after that very short space of 
time, that had taken place which leads to this whole 
story, and that which I can not describe to you, after 
all these years, without the blood running colder in 
my old veins than it has any right to do. What I 
can not describe to you at all, in fact — what I can 


Shadows of 1780. 263 

only indicate, without the least attempt at drawing 
you a picture in any satisfactory colors. 

“ Where I sat, I looked across Captain Andre, in 
his chair, into the large mirror that I have before 
spoken of, at his back. A little in front, and at one 
side of him, as I turned, Captain Cathcart and his 
lady companion were standing, each with a glass of 
wine in hand and occasionally sipping. Andre had 
resumed his glass, and was holding it in his hand, 
speaking at the moment to Captain Calhcart. This 
was what I saw and heard, as I turned my att'^ntion 
back from the passage-way and the dist^*’^^ music. 
But, the moment after, I fancied that ne 

mad ; for I saw in the mirror something so uixi^ ent, 
that neither the mind could quite take it in nor words 
describe it. I must try, however, as I have only a 
few times tried to do in all the years since then. 

“ Looking across Andre and into the glass, I will 
swear that I saw Captain Cathcart, as plainly and in 
his own person, as ever I saw any one in my life. He 
had a glass of wine in his hand, as I have already 
said. But where was Margaret Shippen } Disap- 
peared, as completely as if she had sunken through 
the floor, unless that was she, whose very sight sent 
a cold shiver down my back and froze up my tongue 
so that I could not have spoken if my life depended 
on my doing so ! 

“ Where she had stood the moment before, stood a 
hag — wrinkled without being old, with tall, shrunken 
form, discolored skin, and blazing eyes that seemed 
to be devouring the man in the chair. Her hands 
were unearthly long and skinny, with nails that 
seemed claws. One of those hands held a glass, 
large as ten glasses should have been ; and in that 


264 


The Spur oj Alonmouth. 


glass was a liquor so clotted and red that it could 
have been nothing else than blood. The other, with 
the long claws extended as if in the act of gripping a 
prey, was reached over toward Andre, almost touch- 
ing him. 

“ Heaven and earth ! — was ever such a sight pre- 
sented to the eyes of a mere mortal, without one 
instant of warning.^ My head reeled as I tried to 
brush the horrible vision from my eyes with my 
hand, then looked again, and still saw it as before. 
Remember that I only saw this m the glass y to which 
my eyes were fascinated, and that I did not, at 
this time, or during the vision, see Margaret Ship- 
pen herself, only her reflection. I saw Captain 
Andre, and saw that he did not appear to realize 
anything startling or remarkable, but that, in some 
way out of my power to describe, his fair and ruddy 
complexion had grown cadaverous and deadly, with 
a kind of lurid flush in the skin, as if some ghasfly 
light might be playing on his face. 

“ How long this lasted, I have no idea whatever. 
It seemed to me to be hours, during which I saw that 
fearful hag in the glass, realized that she was grip- 
ping for the young officer, and that she might have 
his blood in the goblet in her hand. Then, altogether 
exhausted, and without the power to look longer, I 
fell back in my chair, apparently not attracting any 
attention from the others, my eyes closed to all the 
outer world, and my brain supplying sights that I 
would almost have given my life to avoid. I saw a 
figure that I knew to be that of Andre, in a wood, 
with several persons surrounding him, one boot from 
his bared foot in the hands of what seemed the leader 
of the others, and a search of his person evidently 


Shadows of 1780. 


265 


going on, while he clasped his hands in a pitiful 
way and begged to be allowed to go forward. Then 
I saw the same figure with the arms pinioned, and the 
face defiant and pale — in a room, alone, a light on a 
table and the hand of a clock pointing to the figure 
six. Then I saw a rude scaffolding of planks, with 
soldiers in the Continental uniform around, and the 
figure of Andre,with the hands still pinioned, assisted 
up a ladder by one also in uniform, who held a long 
rope, and may have been the hangman. 

“ Up to this, the visions of my shut eyes, unac- 
countable and terrible as the)'^ may have been, seemed 
less frightful than the sight I had last seen while 
they were open. But here, when I saw the hang- 
man with his cord, the latter seemed more awful 
than that preceding, and I struggled to regain my 
sight. With a violent effort I succeeded in opening 
my eyes, hoping that the fantasy which had blinded 
them might be gone. But as I looked, still that figure 
in the glass, except that it had thrown itself further 
forward, with a hideous leer upon the face, and the 
one clawed hand was in the act of grasping Captain 
Andre by the throat. 

“Then I lost consciousness and fell from my chair, 
with a cry that rung out to the ball-room, as I was 
told afterward. Some of the guests and some of the 
servants rushed in, picked me up, under the impres- 
sion that I had fainted, and bore me to a couch, 
where I regained my senses an hour or two later, with 
the aid of a physician present. Thank God, none of 
the three persons involved in that terrible vision 
were within sight when I recovered: it might have 
cost me life or reason, had they been visible. I was 
taken home in the gray of the morning; and so 
12 


266 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


ended my experience of the festivities of the night 
of the Mischianza. 

“ Did I speak of this to any one at the time ? The 
question is a natural one. and easily answered. To 
no one — not even to the lady who was my promised 
wife — then, A year later, when Margaret Shippen 
married Benedict Arnold, and I was myself the hus- 
band of her who sleeps this many years under the 
snows of Canada, — I did speak of it, and my wife 
told me many things to prove that there had really 
been a genuine attachment to the lady on the part of 
Captain Andre, then major, on the staff of Sir Henry 
Clinton. She believed that Andre would be much 
grieved, possibly heart-broken, on learning of the 
marriage ; but I never heard that he seemed so. Two 
years after, when occurred what you call ‘Arnold’s 
treason,’ and when it became known that much of the 
intercourse between Andre and Arnold had been 
carried on through the agency of Mrs. Arnold — then, 
you may be sure, my poor wife and myself talked it 
all over, with many a wonder and many a shudder. 
Perhaps we found less difficulty in believing, then, 
that on the night of that festival, in the side room, I 
did really see a spectral warning, sent to the young 
officer, but unseen or disregarded by him, of the 
effect on his life and fate to be produced through the 
agency of Margaret Shippen. Poor fellow! — and 
poor woman as well ; for whatever may have been 
her share in driving her husband to his dangerous 
courses, through extravagance and hatred to the 
patriot cause, be sure that she suffered enough, after 
the treason and in the situation in which she was 
left by it, to repay all that she had ever done to the 
injury of lover or husband. 


Shadows of 1780. 


267 


“Wine or brandy — did you ask ? Brandy, by all 
means, for it, warms the blood in my old veins best ; 
and, besides, after felling you the story that I have 
told, I should think for the momenc that the wine in 
the glass was some of the same blood that I saw in 
the great goblet of the hag, more than fifty years 
ago, in the late night of Sir William Howe’s farewell 
to Philadelphia.” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

A MEETING AT THE KING-OF-PRUSSIA. 

Drawn away for the time from the strict order of 
narration, by the events of the British winter in 
Philadelphia and the omens of the night of the Mis- 
chianza, it now becomes necessary to return to it, 
taking up the record at that point in the middle of 
January, 1778, at which it was temporarily dropped 
under the incitement just named. 

Several times, already, allusion has been made to 
the King-of-Prussia Tavern, standing at some miles 
back from the Schuylkill, beyond the Valley Hills, 
at something like twice the distance from Valley 
Forge, of the residence at Cedar Grove, and on the 
road leading from the Forge to the crossing of the 
Schuylkill, and Norristown. Though really beyond 
the Flills proper, it stood in what might be called a 
hill-country, and was a favorite place of stoppage for 
the carters and others using that important road ; 
while it has attained a double celebrity in having 
been decorated with a sign alleged to have been 
painted by Gilbert Stuart, representing the stout old 
Prussian king in warlike costume, on horseback,-r- 
and on account of the Revolutionary events known 
to have been more or less closely connected with it. 

After the manner of the date of its erection, some- 
where about 1755 to 1760, the King-of-Prussia was a 
somewhat long building, of two low stories, with a 


A Meeting at the King- of- Prussia. 269 

piazza covering the lower at full length,— fronting on 
the road already named, and kept by a German 
named Herman de Vriest, more than suspected of a 
strong indifference to the success of either of the 
armies battling in his neighborhood, and of an 
equally strong desire to keep on what might be 
called the “ right side ” of both the contending 
authorities, by pretending to be in the interest of 
either on occasion. Fronting to the north, at the 
highest point of ground in the immediate section, 
with a clump of wood at the west and the remains of 
what had been one at the east, the tavern stood at 
the very edge of the road, which swept away at either 
end toward Norristown and the Forge, partially in- 
closing the house in the half circle formed by it. 
Though less changed than many other buildings in 
the progress of a century, the King-of-Prussia, be- 
sides having lost the swinging sign which then made 
it doubly famous, has met with no inconsiderable 
number of alterations within the body of the build- 
ing ; and it may be worth something to the antiquar- 
ian to know, as he may know from the lips of those 
who rested and drank in the old tavern at the time 
when Sir William Howe held Philadelphia, — that at 
that time the tap-room, or bar, occupied nearly the 
centre of the first floor ; the kitchen and domestic 
offices, occupying the eastern end, beyond ; the state- 
parlor holding a corresponding position at the west- 
ern end ; and the long chamber of the second story, 
immediately over the latter and very low-windowed, 
being that in which any meeting or conference was 
held, involving the presence of a number of persons, 
if held at all within the house. The stairway, lead- 
ing up to this large chamber as well as to the sleep- 


270 


The Spur of Moniuouth. 

ing-apartments, was opened upon immediately by the 
principal front door, almost in the centre of the 
house ; while another and smaller door, further to 
the left, gave access to the bar, and from that, on 
occasion, to the kitchen and other domestic apart- 
ments, also and more commonly entered from the 
eastern end or the rear. 

So much of description, as recalling the appear- 
ance of the notable old tavern, in days so long past, 
and without any special necessity involved in the 
action taking place in it on a January night of 1778, 
important as that action might have been in connec- 
tion with the other events of this history. What 
was the precise date of that night, may be well re- 
membered from the last directions given by Catharine 
Tralford to Colonel George Vernon, with the con- 
versation afterward occurring with reference to it, 
between the commander-in-chief and Martha Wash- 
ington. And equally well, with the interview be- 
tween General Washington and General Lachlan 
McIntosh kept in mind, will the events closel)'- fol- 
lowing reveal themselves in their true bearing. 

It must have been at something approaching to 
nine o'clock of that night, while the snow lay thick 
and crisp over all the landscape without, and the 
sharp midwinter air shivered through the leafless 
branches of the trees then much more closely sur- 
rounding the King-of-Prussia than they do at pre- 
sent, and gave an occasional creak to the celebrated 
sign-board bearing the dimmed royal effigy, — that 
within that western upper-room were to be found 
assembled nearly a score of persons, without visible 
uniform to indicate that they belonged to either of 
the contending armies, but with that in their faces 


A Meeting at the Kin g-of- Prussia. 271 

and bearing betraying that they were undoubtedly 
men of warlike profession. Here and there a coun- 
tenance showed the ruddiness of long exposure, and 
told of many years’ probable service in one direction 
or another ; but most were the faces of those appar- 
ently young in years, and with a certain refinement 
revealing the status of something beyond the com- 
mon soldier. 

Across the front windows of the room, opening 
upon the road without, in the absence of shutters 
were shirred thick curtains of checked gingham, 
reaching nearly to the tops and shutting out any 
possible view from the roof of the piazza, while still 
permitting a faint light to show through to the ob- 
servation of an)'- one passing, the road. The rear 
windows, not commanded by any roof, showed no 
protection whatever, as only an inquisitive person 
with a ladder, or a bird perching on the sill, could 
have obtained any view within. Local tradition, of 
the time and that time close following, had it that the 
supplying of the gingham curtains to even the front 
windows, was an event occurring some time after the 
erection of the hotel, and caused by the fact that 
some of the termagant wives of the neighborhood 
had been able to discover, through the assistance of 
suborned boys climbing on the piazza roof and 
thence looking in, how were passed, over cards and 
jorums of hot potables, some of those evenings when 
their husbands pretended to have urgent calls away 
from home, on errands of business. Be that as it 
may, they played, on that January night of 1778, a 
very convenient part in preventing any possible sur- 
vey from that piazza roof, and what might have been 
awkward knowledge of one or two of the persons 
there assembled. 


”^272 The Spiir of Moiiinouth. 

X 

As to the appearance, otherwise, of the “ assembly- 
room ” at that juncture, a very few words will convey 
the prominent features. Nearly in the centre of the 
apartment, and with the pipe extending low overhead 
to the chimney, stood a box-stove of the then almost 
universal pattern where stoves had come into use in 
the new country. A fire of huge blocks of wood 
blazed and roared within, throwing out fierce heat 
for a quite extended radius, in recognition of the 
coldness of the night ; and not far from it, toward the 
chimney, a pile of those blocks, half-logs, showed 
the means for keeping up the necessary warmth for 
a considerable period. Two long wooden lounges, 
or settees, once glorified with green flowers on a 
yellow ground, but now sadly faded and with most of 
the flowers worn away, stood on the two sides of the 
stove, drawn much further away from the walls than 
was their place when fulfilling the legitimate duty of 
seating the weary in pauses of the dance ; and 
several chairs, equally wooden, and evidently varied 
in their origin — these, with a red-stained and leafless 
table of pine, and two or three candles in candle- 
sticks of iron, on it — made up what could be called 
the furniture of the apartment. 

Sitting at the table were some half-dozen persons, 
occupying that variety of attitude which seems to 
culminate in the Western World, however natural to 
the members of small assemblies, in all countries. 
Some of the other occupants of the room were stand- 
ing, with backs to the fire, in evident enjoyment of 
the warmth thus secured en arriere ; others occupied 
the chairs, with or without legs elevated on those 
supplemental ; and two, apparently with more years 
on their heads than the average of the small assem- 


A Meeting at the King-of -Prussia. 


273 


bly, were playing, on one end of one of the settees, 
a game of cards that could not wait for the next day- 
light or the conclusion of any business that might 
have called them together. Those at the table, how- 
ever, showed much more of absorption in that “ busi- 
ness,” whatever it might be; and one, leaning par- 
tially across, on his elbows, with head thrust eagerly 
forward, was speaking earnestly and not too calmly 
to two others who occupied positions something like 
his own, physically, though with evidences of mental 
dissent. 

Of all those present on that occasion, only one 
lives in history or has any influence on the course 
of this narration. The others, well or ill playing 
their parts in the great drama then in progress, and 
never especially distinguished, have passed away 
even from wordy immortality. That single person — 
the earnest speaker, leaning forward on his elbow, 
and showing a face somewhat sharp, with keen eyes 
and an active and wiry figure evident under the 
rough caped top-coat of blue which he had not laid 
aside even in the comparative warmth of the room, 
— was General Charles Lee, elsewhere already many 
times mentioned in this chronicle, and destined to 
figure prominently in some of the most remarkable 
episodes of the future, as he had already in some of 
the most notable of the past, of the events of the 
Revolution. 

Here follows, necessarily, one of those conflicts in 
which the Muse of History not seldom indulges, with 
' that other Muse never yet gifted with any name, but 
possibly entitled to the appellation of the Muse of 
’Fact,— the principal claim of the latter to promi- 
nence being derived from eyesight and experience of 
12* 


2 74 Spitr of Monmouth. 

credible witnesses, while that of the former to like 
distinction is very apt to rest upon irresponsible 
hearsay, or to be derived from philosophical deduc- 
tions of what ought to have been^ made in the mind of 
the historical writer. This conflict has nothing to do 
with the early life or services of Charles Lee, well 
known to have supplemented his Welsh birth by 
adventures almost worthy of the flimous Captain 
John Smith, in the armies of various European 
sovereigns, and especially of the King of Poland and 
Frederick the Great; it does not touch his earlier 
services in America, with Abercrombie at Ticonde- 
roga, or holding the chieftainship of an Indian tribe, 
with his hot temper signalized by the name of “ Boil- 
ing Water;” it deals entirely with the question of 
his dual existence or that of where he was and could 
have been, in the mid-January of 1778. 

That this commander slowly and reluctantly con- 
sented to merge the glories which he had hoped per- 
sonally to attain, in those of Washington, by obeying 
the orders of the latter to cross Eastern Jersey and 
join him at Morristown, in the winter of 1776— that 
in making that delayed march with the detachment 
left in his charge at White Plains, he was captured 
by the British Colonel Harcourt at White’s Tavern, 
Baskingridge, New Jersey, on the 13th December of 
that year, his guard dispersed, and himself taken 
away prisoner to New York— so much is beyond dis- 
pute, as matter of concurrent history and personal 
relation. That he was exchanged for the British 
General Prescott, captured at Warwick Point, Rhode 
Island, loth July, 1777, might be also received as fact 
beyond cavil, but for the difficulty that Prescott is 
well known to have been exchanged by the British 


A Meeting at the King-of-P)-ussia. 


275 


for the American General Sullivan, captured at the 
Battle of Long Island, August, 1776. This known, 
there may remain less difficulty in doubting the 
statement that his release by the British took place 
in April, 1778, as some authorities have it, or in May, 
1778, or even as late as June, as otherwise stated, on 
the very eve of Washington’s leaving Valley Forge. 
As against these conflicting statements, there can 
not be much hesitation in accepting the personal re- 
lations of those present at Valley Forge, throughout 
that momentous winter, coupled with the well-known 
operations of the military cabal during the same 
period, and in which the agency of Lee has never 
been questioned, — as proving that he was released 
by the British at a much earlier date, in exchange 
for whom, if for any one (certainly not Prescott), can 
not now be determined from any reliable data. He 
really joined Washington at Valley Forge not later 
than December, 1777, a whole month elapsing, after 
the return, for the violent siege which he certainly 
then and there laid to Catharine Trafford, with what 
result we have already been advised in her late con- 
ference with Colonel George Vernon. 

All this, for the purpose, and the only purpose, of 
forestalling that charge so likely to be made, of the 
present chronicler, anxious to introduce Charles Lee 
as among the dramatis personcE of that special period 
at Valley Forge, having overlooked the fact that he 
was at that time in confinement in New York, and 
recklessly indulged in an impossibility. This to say 
that from higher authority than that of any modern 
historical record (at the best, largely founded upon 
allegations of others), — from the relations made half 
a century since, of those conversant with the place, 


276 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


time, and personages, Charles Lee was at Valley 
Forge in January, 1778, and at the King-of-Prussia 
on that memorable night, playing the exact part here 
ascribed to him, and raising the superstructure (the 
foundation laid some time before, through circum- 
stances already well understood) of that final quarrel 
to culm'inate at Monmouth, to work such injury to 
the patriot cause, and to shadow the whole after-life 
of the man, who, however eminent his capacities for 
command, had none whatever for obedience. 

This historical point considered, it is necessary to 
follow more closely the proceedings of those on that 
night gathered at the King-of-Prussia, and to take 
note of certain others, of no less importance, close 
following. 

Evidently at this hour the small gathering in the 
large room of the inn had been for some time assem- 
bled ; and equally evident was it that something con- 
sidered of importance had been under discussion, 
from the positions of some of the participants, 
already referred to, and from the fact that at the door 
of the room — comparatively in shadow, in the dim 
light, stood one of the number, whose office would 
seem to have been the prevention of any awkward 
intrusion. Something more of suspicion might pos- 
sibly be gathered from a small number of written 
papers held in the hand of General Lee as he spoke, 
and which he several times rapped with a certain im- 
patience, as if alluding to their contents and repro- 
bating any dissent from the record which they bore. 
Beyond this, who shall do more than judge, from all 
concurrent circumstances, the character of the meet- 
ing — all the lips then speaking, long ago silent, and 
the papers that might have been so instructive. 


A Meeting at the King-of- Prussia. 277 

vanished with the breath of the speakers? Yet, in 
the light of the words so lately spoken by Catharine 
Trafford (who so well informed as she, for many 
reasons ?) not much doubt can exist of the fact that 
the meeting of officers was really a part of the mili- 
tary cabal against Washington, and possibly the 
nucleus of the whole movement. That it was in- 
tended to be private, as from the knowledge of the 
supreme'authOrity, alike the place, the hour, and all 
movements gave evidence; and perhaps no more 
striking proof of the absolute danger involved in it, 
could be supplied by any single circumstance. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

AN ALARM AND AN AWKWARD INTERRUPTION. 

The same fates which had decreed that the exact 
purport of the papers in the hands of General Lee 
should never be known to the world, though their 
tenor might easily be guessed — also decreed that the 
positions held by that officer and his companions, at 
the moment when attention has been called to them 
in the previous chapter, should be of no long con- 
tinuance after that moment. There was a sound 
of voices at the door, sufficiently loud to attract 
the attention of those assembled, and to make the 
holder of the papers withdraw them from their posi- 
tion and thrust them under the table against which 
he leaned ; and then, while the indefinable fear of 
danger from the unknown gave way to quite equal 
wonder at the known, the landlord of the King-of- 
Prussia half forced his way into the apartment and 
up to what seemed naturally the centre of the little 
gathering. 

The traditional Dutchman is stout, and his cousin, 
the German, is almost equally so, in all relations 
intended to catch the popular applause by echoing 
foregone conclusions. Let this chronicle have the 
distinction of unpopularity, in running counter to all 
received opinions, and especially in saying, what the 
tongues of the old soldiers remaining alive fifty 
years ago would freely have supported — that the 


An Awkward Interruption. 279 

landlord of the King-of-Prussia, “old Harman de 
Vriest,” as the broad speakers of the time were fond 
of calling him before he had reached the age of five- 
and-forty, — was by no means stout, after the man- 
ner of the Hollander or German, though he blended 
the blood of both in his anomalous composition. 

How that wondrous departure from the received 
custom of the mixed race could ever have occurred, 
must remain a mystery, as no doubt it was to the 
Pennsylvania Dutchman himself — but Herman de 
Vriest was the very antipodes of the traditional Teu- 
ton, and the correspondingly traditional dispenser 
(and supposably drinker) of beer. At least two 
inches beyond six feet in height, spare enough to 
suggest that the width had been drawn in to make 
up for the length, large handed, larger footed, dark 
complexioned and hard faced, — the landlord might 
have stood, half a century later, to Coleridge, as the 
type of his Ancient Mariner: 

— “ Long, and dark, and lank, 

As is the ribbed sea-sand.” 

Those large hands could swing themselves with 
force on occasion ; and those huge feet could kick 
with something approaching to the energy displayed 
by one of his own horses in a similar operation, as 
more than one of the topers who had carried unpaid 
scores beyond the bounds of patience, could testify 
from personal experience in an illegal species of 
“forcible ejectment.” He was 'the possessor of 
plenty of courage, of a certain sort, — yet as destitute 
of that which could have made him a soldier, as one 
of the huge back-logs of his great kitchen fire ; and 
the exposition of his political principles, or the want 
of them, lately made in this connection, shows the 


28o The Spur of Monmouth. 

unlikelihood of his ever having entered the armed 
service of either belligerent ; so that, indeed, field- 
fighting was out of the question, and the more of 
energy remained for the fierce conflicts of home. 
These conflicts, if tradition went for anything, were 
not few in number, and all that that phrase would in- 
dicate, in character — Frau Annchen de Vriest having 
all the qualifications for the wife of an eighteenth- 
century innkeeper, and the landlord being among 
those who best knew the fact. The son of a Hol- 
landisch father and a Hoch Deutsche* mother, and 
living in the midst of a community blending the 
patois of one and the other with the ordinary collo- 
quial English of the “ world’s people ” and the “ plain 
language” of the Quakers — it is not strange that 
Herman de Vriest had become the»patron of all the 
languages thus involved and the master of none — 
any sentence of twenty words being likely to employ 
the whole of his lingual acquirements, with a few 
chance expressions thrown in from the occasional 
Frenchman and the still lingering Indian. 

Something more than the requisite time and space 
have been consumed in limning the landlord of the 
King-of-Prussia, from loving recollection of more 
than one description of him (not always agreeing — 
let the fact be admitted !) given by those who tippled 
a little at his bar in the long gone days, — and from 
the necessity of explaining why, in the few words 
falling from his lips, the simple English idiom is to 
be substituted for the expected broken speech of the 
Dutchman. Some tasks appal even those most con- 
fident of their own powers ; and any attempt to re- 
cord the actual phraseology of the mild polyglot of 
1778 may well be avoided. 


An Awkward Interruption. 281 

Really, meanwhile, a very brief period had elapsed 
within the great room of the tavern. In that period 
Herman de Vriest had forced his way to the table, 
and somewhat hurriedly and very excitedly addressed 
General Lee, who still held the papers under the 
leaf, and gave evidence of being annoyed at this 
sudden interruption. 

“ Sorry to disturb customers, and good customers,” 
the publican was saying, in effect ; “ but may be they 
might be worse disturbed if I minded the orders of 
your younker at the door, and stayed out.” 

“Worse disturbed Eh, Herman — what do you 
mean ? ” was the inquiry of Lee, remarking that the 
host was really agitated by something that seemed of 
importance — at least to himself. 

“ I mean,” was the repl)% “ that there are the 
sounds of horses’ feet on the frozen ground and 
snow — some hundreds of them, I should think, by 
the noise, and coming nearer, apparently from two 
directions. Young Herman, my son, heard them, 
ran in and told me; and I have thought it best to 
tell you, gentlemen — for who they may be nobody 
can tell, and they may not be of the right sort for 
some of you — who k nows .^” 

“ Bodies of horse, and coming in two directions ! ” 
echoed Lee, rising from the table in an agitation pro- 
bably not unnatural under all the circumstances, and 
for the time taking no heed of the papers in his hand. 
“In two directions? — that can only be from toward 
Norristown — or possibly Philadelphia — and the 
Forge! What can this mean? Are you sure, man, 
that the boy has not been deceived ? ” 

“ Sure that / have not been deceived,” was the re- 
sponse. “The tramp can be heard now, from the 


282 The Spur of Mo 7 tvio 7 iih. 

door, aye, or from the window, for there is no wind. 
Listen ! ” 

Cold as was the night, the landlord, as he spoke, 
drew back one of the curtains and flung up the lower 
sash of the window it covered. Lee was at the open- 
ing in an instant, with ear turned outward, while 
some of the others in the room crowded as silently 
as possible in the same direction. Then, silence 
within the room, even to thp heavy drawing of a 
breath, except an occasional crackle from the stove. 
Some days had elapsed since the falling of the last 
snow, and the travel of war time had beaten it to a 
hardness approaching that of the ground beneath, 
so that it no longer muffled the sound of the falling 
hoof. Plainly, then, to the ear of the practiced 
soldier, there came the beat of horses’ feet, only 
heard in one direction, and that as very near, coming 
up the last hill of the road from Valley Forge. 

Words would be worse than wasted in saying that 
Charles Lee was no coward — that he was, in his way, 
and under circumstances permitting the exhibition of 
his quality, one of the bravest of men, in spite of the 
inquiry not long after hurled at him by Washington, 
as to the “extraordinary precaution ” of Monmouth! 
But at that moment, and hearing the beat of the 
horses hoofs coming in at that open window, his 
saturnine face certainly whitened, as that of any man 
may well do, without cowardice, in the presence of 
the unexpected and the unexplainable. No doubt, 
one conclusion forced itself on his mind, with the 
rapidity born of the life of a soldier. The force, 
whatever it might be, was approaching from the 
direction of head-quarters ; all probability, then, made 
it some detachment from the patriot army, as from 


An Awkwai'd hiteri^uption. 


283 


the royal hold at Philadelphia the advance would 
have been from the opposite. For what, at that hour, 
could patriot horse be on the march ? What was 
known? — what was guessed? — in what peril, as to 
life, liberty or the service, might not all stand who 
occupied that apartment ? Those papers — 

Quickly as the thought struck the man who had 
followed Stanislaus Augustus, he acted upon it. In 
the next instant he had left the window, approached 
the stove, whirled open the reddened door, and tem- 
porarily assisted the conflagration then raging within 
the huge cast-iron parallelogram, by the addition of 
a handful of documents. The new fuel may possibly 
have been quite as inflammatory as anything therein 
before contained ; and for one instant it certainly 
added to the roaring of the wood-fed flame, while the 
act paled the cheeks of more than one of the younger 
officers who had before only been looking on -and 
listening in wonder. 

“You see, gentlemen, what I have done, and you 
can well understand why,” was the succeeding com- 
ment of the master-spirit, speaking with even more 
than his usual rapidity. “ You all know the contents 
of those papers ; and I do not choose that too many 
others shall know them, if we are followed and 
hemmed in, as seems possible. And now, our busi- 
ness being ended for the evening, I suggest that this 
meeting break up, and that we disperse at once, to 
meet again when notice is given.” 

There are some suggestions that commend them- 
selves to all hearers ; and this, all surroundings con- 
sidered, was one of them. Scarcely a moment later, 
and the little assemblage had dissolved, down the 
stairway and in the direction of the one door which 


284 


The Spur of AIo7imouth. 


all prudence recommended — that at the rear of the 
lower hall. Herman de Vriest had been among the 
first to leave the room, his bar demanding attention. 
General Lee followed him very closely, and was 
among the earliest to reach the rear door : indeed, 
his own hand opened it. But he went no further, for 
the moment ; for Lachlan McIntosh had done his 
work carefully as silently, and no doubt at any time 
within the previous half hour the same sentinel there 
standing, and barring the way with his bayoneted 
musket, had held the same position. Lee made a 
motion to step from the door, in advance of the 
others, but was stopped by the leveled musket, with 
the brief explanation from the Continental soldier: 

“ Stand back ! Orders, gentlemen. No one passes 
here." 

It may well be believed that the blood of “ Boiling 
Water " rose into fierce ebullition at this indignity. 
Luckily, perhaps, for all concerned, he remembered, 
in time, that he was an officer, dealing with an inferior 
on duty; and with merely a “humph!" of disgust 
he stepped back within the door, and while the half 
dozen who had accompaniecT him in the attempted 
escape, closed it and followed, rapidly traversed the 
hall to the front door and flung it open. As he did 
so and set foot upon the piazza, another of the Con- 
tinental soldiers, musket at the “present," barred 
his way ; and as he looked across him to the road 
without, a scene met his eye fully explaining the 
hoof-beats lately heard on the road below, if not the 
reason for their sounding at that time and place. 

Just halting in front of the tavern were some 
squadrons of American horse, quite easily recognized 
in the partial light from the prevailing snow and that 


An Awkward Interruption. 285 

from the inn windows. These showed, by their head- 
ing, that they had come up from the direction of 
Valley Forge; while another and smaller body, just 
trotting up from the eastward, evidenced the fact 
that there indeed had been a well-ordered attempt 
at surprise and surrounding. From the first body a 
horseman was just dismounting, and he approached 
the piazza on the instant after Lee had been a second 
time checked by the sentinel. A searching glance 
at the figure of the new-comer showed the practiced 
eye of the old soldier that it was that of Lachlan 
McIntosh ; and whatever of subsidence there had 
been in the boiling of his hot blood, it rose again on 
the instant of the recognition, as (all other consider- 
ations of the time out of the way) the gorge of the 
Welshman and the Scotsman is well known to have 
risen at the rival nationality, throughout all those 
centuries of picturesque warfare illustrated by the 
mediaeval historians and the old dramatists. General 
Lee, after a single instant of pause, made a move- 
ment to leave the piazza, in spite of the sentry’s 
challenge, with the effect of bringing the soldier’s 
weapon to the “charge,” and of sending the hand of 
the officer to his sword. 

“ Stand there, whaever ye are ! ” at that moment 
rang out ’the voice of McIntosh, then very near to 
the piazza, and possibly not yet recognizing the 
muffled figure of the other. 

“ I shall probably take that command from my 
superior, when I find him, but not from my inferior ! ” 
was the hasty reply of Lee, with the arrogant addi- 
tion : “What all this means. General McIntosh, I 
neither know nor care; but I advise and your 
men to stand back when / wish to pass.” 


286 


Tha spur of Monmouth. 


“ Heydey ! but it’s het Chairlie ! ” rather niuttered 
than spoke the Scot, recognizing the voice. Then 
to the irate officer, who was indeed his superior in 
rank and command: “Toots, general, if it's ye, in- 
deed, yer sair oot o’ yer reckoning gin yer think that 
ony man’s too muckle for the mindin’ of a bit order, 
when it’s backed by a troop or sae and yer all alane. 
Bide where ye are, it’s my advice, without ony mair 
words, gin yer the crooned deil ; or it ’ll be the waur 
for ye, I’m fancyin’ ! ” 

All speculation fails, as to the rage no doubt at 
that instant, and at such mocking words from the 
lips of an inferior for the moment placed in powei 
over him, glowing in the breast of “ Boiling Water.” 
Well was it for all concerned, perhaps, that no 
opportunity was given for the ebullition so immi- 
nent. For when the last word of the Scot had 
scarcely left his lips, another figure appeared at the 
edge of the piazza, coming down from the road 
where the troops were halted ; and something in that 
tall figure, wrapped in its horseman’s cloak, showed, 
even through the dusk, that it belonged* to the com- 
mander-in-chief. How rapidly, in an instant, the 
situation changed with that appearance, may be 
easily understood. Even then, however, words might 
have been spoken, leading (as some later did^ to a 
life-long regret, but for the wise course pursued by 
the man who was really as subtle as he appeared to 
be frank and candid of speech. 

“ You will keep your force in position. General 
McIntosh,” he said, very calmly ; “ and you. General 
Lee, as I am so fortunate as to have found you here, 
will act with me in an examination of this house, 
which it seems requires to be made.” 


A 71 Awkward hiterriipfion, 287 

“An examination of this house, general!” Lee 
could not avoid echoing, as an exclamation. “ For 
what — may I ask?” — and certainly the old soldier 
for the instant stammered his surprise ; then, remem- 
bering himself, adding: “At your command always, 
sir ; may I be honored with your orders ? ” 

“ I am a little puzzled, myself. General Lee,” 
answered Washington, very calmly, “as to what 
those orders are to be ; as your presence here — not 
too prudent, is it, so far away from head-quarters, 
and when so lately out of captivity? — as your pre- 
sence here, and that of some junior officers whom I 
am confident that I recognize, makes it almost im- 
possible that I can have been correctly informed.” 

If General Lee had before been puzzled, he could 
not at that moment have been otherwise than thun- 
derstruck, in the presence of words that might mean 
so much in any direction. And again his usually 
ready tongue took up its trick of stammering, as he 
asked : 

“May I be allowed to inquire, general, what was 
the information to which you allude ? ” 

“Certainly,” was the immediate reply. “I bad 
information that seemed reliable, that this inn, so 
near to my quarters as to be at least dangerous ffir 
such practices, was being made the rendezvous of 
certain disguised partisans of the enemy, and that at 
this hour I should certainly find them assembled, in 
some privacy belonging to the house. May I ask, in 
return, if you and your companions have been here 
for any length of time — as that could scarcely be 
the case and such a gathering unknown ? ” 

For once, beyond a doubt, the rough cheek of Lee 
burned in the winter dusk, as he answered : 


288 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


“ I have myself been here for something more than 
an hour, general, and some of these junior officers 
nearly as long — some longer, probably.” 

“And you have seen or heard — I may assume so 
much, I think — nothing of the character men- 
tioned ? ” 

“ Nothing, general.” 

“You have been — pardon my asking this ques- 
tion also — you have been within the house, most or 
all that time ? ” 

“ Within the house, nearly all that time, general ; 
and I am confident that nothing of importance could 
have occurred within it, without my knowledge.” 

“ I have your confident word, then, do I, General 
Lee, that a search of the house would be superfluous 
— that there can not probably be any dangerous 
gathering, demanding the arrest of those partici- 
pating?” 

“ You have my word to that effect, general ; though 
perhaps — ” 

“ I have known your ability, and recognized your 
services, too long. General Lee,” said Washington, 
very gravely and calmly, “ to believe that you could 
have been in such immediate neighborhood to any 
number of those unfriendly to our cause, without 
being aware of the fact. So be good enough to con- 
sider that point as established. There must have 
been some error in the information, to be looked 
after later. And perhaps the King-of-Prussia will be 
nothing the worse for the visit, all said.” 

General Lee bowed, through the dusk, as all the 
answer that could be made under the circumstances ; 
but Washington spoke again, and in a voice notably 
louder than that in which he had before been speak- 


An Awkward Interruption. 289 

ing, so that all those present — the unrecognized 
participants in the late meeting, some of them yet 
lingering, at no great distance, among others — 
could clearly hear the words that fell from his lips. 

“There may be something more in this, General 
Lee,” he said, “than meets the eye at this moment. 
Such information usually has a certain foundation ; 
and it will be necessary to hold the King-of-Prussia 
under a trifle of surveillance, even at the risk of 
another ride for nothing through the winter night 
air. As I have before said, I do not command, but 
suggest, that my officers, under the present advise- 
ment, will do well not to visit this inn too frequently, 
or under circumstances that may be easily misunder- 
stood.” 

If Lee had been in doubt, not long before, of the 
position in which he and those with him temporarily 
stood, he remained no longer in that uncertainty. 
•That more than a suspicion existed, in the mind of 
the commander-in-chief, of the true character of the 
meetings held at the King-of-Prussia, he no longer 
questioned, after those closing words. He was be- 
trayed — they were betrayed — how or by whom, was 
something beyond human guess. But the fact, and 
the danger it involved, were none the more to be 
ignored on that account. The papers, so important 
an element of the cabal, were dust and ashes ; and 
to all those within hearing, except possibly himself, 
had as certainly been spoken a warning that none 
would disregard, as if they had been very differently 
shaped in utterance. The Pater Patrice, under the 
prompting so lately received, had shattered a pro- 
mising project at a single blow, without leaving even 
an excuse for understanding that he had done so. 

13 


290 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


The discomfited man of many projects and more 
passions, stood motionless upon the edge of the 
piazza, except as he mechanically raised his hand to 
his chapeau in answering salutation, — as the com- 
mander-in-chief thus closed the interview, turned 
away, and went back to the troop standing at ease 
in the snowy road, now augmented by the force 
which had made a short circuit and approached from 
the eastward. Lee saw, as through a mist, the tall 
cloaked form pass further from him, as it was des- 
tined never to do from his mentality, to his dying 
day. He heard, as if afar off, the strong voice of 
Lachlan McIntosh, with its Scotch patois, giving 
orders to the troop to wheel and take the return 
route to Valley Forge. And many minutes had 
elapsed, and most of those who had so lately been in 
concert with himself had disappeared, one by one, as 
the integers of failing enterprises have the habit of 
melting away after a certain crisis,— when at last the 
checked plotter turned sullenly on his heel, quitted 
the piazza by the eastern end, made his way to one 
of the humble outbuildings where his horse was 
sheltered from the night and cold, mounted him and 
rode away by a by-road well known to himself, that 
would lead him back to the cantonments, without 
further rencontre with the armed force setting out 
on its return from an enterprise seeming, to most 
observers, so insignificant, if not so mistaken. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

JOCK o' HAZELDEAN IN WAR-TIME. 

Not seldom we harness ourselves carefully for the 
combat that is never to be, and find occasion for the 
armor in a fight little expected ; and whether the 
commander-in-chief, in visiting the King-of-Prussia 
on that memorable night, had achieved enough in 
warning and thus effectually alarming the military 
cabal, to repay him for the personal exertion and the 
calling out of Wilson’s and Gregg’s light horse from 
their repose in the cantonments, certain it is that the 
return to Valley Forge was not to be made without 
his discovering that there was good reason for his 
being abroad, however different from anything pre- 
viously expected. 

At less than half a mile distance from the tavern, 
at the foot of the slight rise near the crown of which 
it stood, a minor road, little more than a horse-track, 
though capable of being passed by vehicles with some 
difficulty, crossed the highway leading back to Valley 
Forge. When the returning force, with the com- 
mander and General McIntosh riding side by side, 
were within a short distance of the cross-road, the 
figure of a horseman moving at good speed was seen 
against the snowy bank, on the opposite side, coming 
down toward the river from the southward. Both 
Washington and his subordinate noted the appear- 
ance at about the same moment, when yet they were 


292 


The Spur of Moiimouth, 


at some hundreds of yards distance, and when the 
horseman had nearly half a corresponding distance 
to measure before passing the junction of the roads. 
In times like these, every traveler, and more especi- 
ally every one riding at speed, is necessarily more or 
less an object of suspicion, or at least of inquiry ; and 
the thought was natural in the minds of the officers 
that perhaps in this horseman some one, hitherto 
unsuspected, was escaping from the late rendezvous, 
whose known presence might have given a very dif- 
ferent and much more serious character to the meet- 
ing. To intercept him, meanwhile, at this disadvan- 
tage as to distance, and with the evident speed of 
the beast he rode, seemed altogether impossible. 
But even as this thought ran through the minds of 
both, and as Washington turned in his saddle to say 
so much to the Scot, one of those accidents to which 
rough riders are subject, and especially rough riders 
by night, changed the whole aspect of the affair, and 
reversed the advantage previously held by the un- 
known as to both distance and speed. 

Betrayed by a hole of some depth in the road at 
near the crossing, covered with a thin crust of snow, 
and thus invisible to both horse and rider, the ani- 
mal, sharply ridden, set hoof in the depression, 
floundered an instant, struggled to keep footing, and 
then, in spite of the assistance of the bridle in no 
unpracticed hand, fell heavily forward, carrying the 
horseman with and partially under him, eliciting a 
cry of pain from the man and a snort of fright from 
the beast thus suddenly brought to a halt in his 
career. Quite a moment of continued struggle fol- 
lowed, in the joinc effort of the horse to rise and of 
the rider to extricate himself ; and in that moment 


yoch <?’ Hazeldean in War-Time. 293 

the two officers, spurring rapidly forward under the 
double incitement of pity and curiosity, were at the 
side of the fallen, and Lachlan McIntosh out of his 
saddle and ready to assist or arrest as the case might 
demand, when the foremost files of the troops halted 
opposite, and the unfortunate found himself in the 
hands of an armed body. 

At that moment the horse succeeded in recovering 
his feet, and the rider, evidently shaken though with 
no bones broken, also reached an erect position, and 
stood a little bewildered by the spectacle before him. 
Washington was the first to break silence, with the 
inquiry, at once natural and humane : 

“A bad fall, sir; but I trust that you are not 
seriously injured } ” 

“ Not much, I think, though my leg went under 
the blundering brute and might have been broken,” 
was the reply, followed by a glance which seemed to 
sweep around and take in the military party and then 
the persons nearest him. 

“ Deil blame the horse, man, in siccan a hole as 
that and at the gait ye were gaun ! ” interposed Mc- 
Intosh, as warm a friend to the four-footed as the 
age could supply. But Washington replied much 
more sternly, immediately after: 

“ No, I do not see that the horse was in fault : 
much more likely (your pardon, young sir!) that the 
hand on the bridle was scarcely quick enough for 
rough roads and night-riding at speed.” 

' “ Humph ! ” was all the comment, and that not too 
amiable, of the late rider, who had not relinquished 
the bridle and yet held it in his hand, while the 
heaving flanks and drooped head of his horse could 
be distinguished even through the dusk and against 


294 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


the snow. By the same doubtful light, too, it could 
be see that the horseman was of notably tall figure, 
wrapped in a heavy riding-coat, below which there 
was a glint of silver from long military spurs, while a 
broad, soft-flapped hat hung low over his face, and 
would have prevented easy recognition even in a 
better atmosphere for view. All these details the 
quick eye of the commander-in-chief had rapidly 
embraced ; and it is truth to say that the latter one 
especially went no small distance to corroborate the 
suspicion lately formed, that this man, wjiatever or 
whoever he might be, had lately been at the King-of- 
Prussia, and that the suspected plot might then have 
deeper and more treasonable roots than before be- 
lieved. 

“ Stupid of horse, hand or both,” at length the 
unhorsed rider remarked, filling a pause that had 
grown awkward. “ I was riding in haste, however, 
as 5'^ou probably saw, and if my girths are all right — ” 

“ Nae muckle wrong wi’ the girths or wi’ the 
beastie, that I can see,” said Lachlan McIntosh, who 
had thoughtfully thrust his fingers under that portion 
of the horse-accoutrements. “ But for yersel’, young 
man, before ye ride we’re under the wee necessity of 
askin' the bit question, wha are ye and where ye ride 
and for what ava ? ” 

“ Am I to consider myself a prisoner, then ? ” some- 
what haughtily demanded the other, the bridle still 
in his hand. 

” Deil one o’ me knows; yersel’ should ken 
muckle the better,” was the reply of the Scot ; then 
adding; “This is war-time, young man, as aiblins 
ye ken wi’out telling. 'Deed ye might be a soldier 
yersel’, wi’ small change. I’m thinking. And men do 


Jock Hazeldean in War-Time. 295 

not pass wi’out giving place, name, and the bit 
errand they’re doing, e’en wi’ tumblin’ into the road 
as a reason for waivin’ that trifle of ceremony.” 

But again, as in a previous instance at the tavern 
piazza, the voice of Washington prevented any con- 
tinuance in the quasi-raillery of his subordinate, and 
possibly the utterance of angry words. on the part of 
his interlocutor. 

“ YtDung sir,” was the grave speech of the com- 
mander, “whether you are a soldier or no, you can 
not be entirely ignorant of the usages of war, after 
all the years in which it has scourged this country. 
It was the first duty of this officer and myself to 
assist you if in any difficulty from your accident — ” 

“ For so much I beg you to believe that I thank 
you,” replied the unknown, without quite waiting for 
the conclusion of the whole sentence. 

“ Our second duty, as in command of this detach- 
ment,” the commander went on, without acknowl- 
edging the interpolated thanks, “is to demand of 
you what this officer has asked, before allowing you 
to resume your journey. So much you should know, 
and so much will certainly be required before you 
leave this spot, except under guard.” 

For a moment after this there was silence. Then 
followed what neither of the officers could have 
expected — what surprised them as much as any 
single event could possibly have done. That the 
man before them was young and of vigorous propor- 
tions they saw and understood ; that he was a soldier, 
of whatever service, they more than believed. And 
yet what they saw and heard after the declaration of 
Washington, was the sudden bowing down of the 
young man’s head on his breast and the breaking 


296 The Spur of Monmouth. 

from him of sobs that seemed to evidence the most 
dastardly fear or the deepest sorrow. All honor to 
the memory of both! — they did not for a moment 
fall into the error of believing that the first was the 
compelling cause ; they both divined that something 
more was here hidden than marked the ordinary 
course of adventure and arrest. 

For only a brief space, however, this convulsion 
shook the unknown ; then with a great effort he con- 
trolled the emotion, and at least partially regained 
his composure. In point of fact, he, the moment 
before in pitiable irresolution as well as in serious 
trouble, had sprung to a determination, and in that 
determination found relief. 

“ General Washington ! ” he spoke, and at the 
mention of the name both of the officers started, “ I 
have to ask a favor that I think you of all men will 
be the last to deny me — a word of private confer- 
ence with yourself." 

The habitually slow and careful commander did 
not answer on the instant ; and, believing that he 
hesitated, the other continued : 

“ I may make you less willing to grant me the 
favor, and I may possibly make you more so, by say- 
ing that I am a soldier. I am armed, but wish to 
show my good faith by handing my weapons, — my 
only weapons, upon my word as a gentleman — to 
this officer, as surety that I have no treacherous 
intentions." 

With the last word he drew from their confinement 
at his waist a pair of richly mounted pistols, held 
them out to General McIntosh, and made a move- 
ment to unbuckle the sword hidden under his outer 
coat. But a counter-movement from Washington 


Jock o' Hazeldeari in War-Time, 


297 

arrested both motions, as his next words placed the 
whole affair upon a very different as well as unex- 
pected footing. 

“ Leave the sword where it belongs, young sir,” he 
said, calmly as he had before spoken. “ The pistols 
you may hand me, if you please,” taking the weapons 
with the words, “ because you may feel more at ease 
in doing so. You have asked a private conference 
with me, and 1 shall grant it, though a brief one. 
General, be good enough to fall back ten paces, and 
to see that none of your men come nearer. Now, 
young sir, we are alone, and I await your pleasure.” 

Lachlan McIntosh had measured his ten paces with 
mathematical accuracy as well as military celerity, 
almost before the commander ceased speaking ; and 
the two were indeed alone. Then Washington handed 
back the pledged pistols to his singular companion, 
with the few and pregnant words : 

“ Put these where they belong, young sir, and 
never again insult the courage of your bitterest 
enemy by making such a tender. If, as you seem to 
think, I command an army, I should scarcely be 
afraid of violence from a single man, face to face.” 

“ He is all that they tell us — more than they tell 
us ! ” rather muttered than spoke the )'^oung man, as 
he took the proffered weapons and replaced them in 
their concealment. Then he said, aloud, though in 
a voice trembling with emotion : “ I am ashamed, 
general, after what you have seen, to say that I am 
a British officer.” 

“ I thought so much,” replied Washington, curtly. 

“ But I wish to give you my word of honor as a 
gentleman and an officer, that I am not upon any 
service inimical to your cause — that I am on leave 

13* 


298 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


entirely upon private and personal business, any 
hindrance in which will be ruinous to me without 
good to any one.” 

“You have forgotten, sir, to give me your name, 
as a part of this confidence,” answered Washington. 

“ Captain Walter Trenholm,” was the reply, with 
the least perceptible hesitation between two of the 
words. 

“ And you expect me, sir, to credit your assertion 
as to the private character of your errand, when you 
interpolate a falsehood in ' the very statement ! ” 
severely spoke the commander. His voice, though 
the other was not probably aware of the fact, lost 
something of its steadiness as he added: “Captain 
Walter Trafford, you should begin your confidences 
by telling the truth ; as such is, I believe, the code 
of gentlemen.” 

“Good God!” The young man could no more 
have suppressed that cry of overwhelming surprise 
than changed his very being. “ You know my name, 
general ! What do you not know ! ” 

“ I do not know. Captain Trafford, what is the 
remainder of the confidence with which you are about 
to favor me.” 

The emphasis upon that important word by no 
means escaped his hearer ; and, truth to say, it broke 
him down most miserably. 

“ I beg you to believe, general,” he said in a voice 
that faltered not a little, “that I only intended to 
deceive you in a single particular — that of my name, 
Do you — can you believe me ? 

“I do believe you, now. Captain Trafford. Pray 
proceed, as the hour is late, and time presses.” 

“ God knows how it presses with me!*' spoke the 


yock o' Hazeldean in War-Time. 


299 

young man, with almost maddened energy ; and in 
the moment following there poured from his lips one 
of those stories which Lachlan McIntosh would have 
though best illustrated by “Jock o’ Hazeldean ” and 
“ Young Lochinvar,” though running through all the 
ages and flavoring the romance of all countries. That 
the story was earnest and true no hearer could well 
doubt ; and certainly his auditor had no suspicion of 
his fidelity. It was the story of an honorable amour 

— of cruelty to the object of his affections, materially 
for his sake, on the part of her family — of her resi- 
dence at a few miles distance, not far from the Schuyl- 
kill, in the direction toward which he had been riding 

— of arrangements for elopement and marriage, made 
for that very night, and that must fail if he was not at 
once again on the road to keep his appointment — of 
the misery to both that must certainly follow — of 
the evil hap that had met him in the accident to his 
horse, and the life-long gratitude that would be paid 
if his assurance of present non-combatism could be 
believed and he permitted to pursue that hurried 
journey on which so much depended. 

Seldom had come such a story to the ears of George 
Washington ; and it may be doubtful if at ordinary 
periods of his life, such a story would have impressed 
him favorably, however romantic the elements. But 
at that time, and from that person ! Catharine 
Trafford had done far more than she knew, in begging 
Colonel George Vernon to possess the commander- 
in-chief with the name and position of her brother, 
and to beg any favor for him if he should fall into the 
patriot hands ! How could that commander-in-chief 
do otherwise than to honor the promise of his favorite 
aid, of any possible mercy to her wild and darling 


300 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


brother? It would seem that Colonel Vernon must 
even have conveyed to his chief the very sound of 
Catharine Trafford’s voice, as well as the contour of 
her features ; as certainly almost from the moment 
that he heard and saw the young man closely, Wash- 
ington had held no doubt of his identity, and no 
intention of detaining him without absolute military 
necessity. 

But why linger upon this story of all time, that 
may be so easily told in a brief sentence? Lachlan 
McIntosh, holding his stipulated ten paces of dis- 
tance, saw, with less surprise than most might have 
felt who less closely knew his superior, the young 
man mount the apparently uninjured horse that he 
had been holding by the bridle during the interview, 
and ride away across the road and northward, bidden 
“good-night!” by the commander-in-chief in so 
loud and clear a voice that there could not be any 
question of his full consent to the departure. 

The fact may be worth noting, as one of the reasons 
for the confidence reposed by Washington in Gene- 
ral McIntosh, and his employment of the Scot in the 
most important secret details of the campaign — that 
as the delayed troops took their way back to Valley 
Forge, through the night that was now grown to very 
nearly midnight, the subordinate did not ask a single 
question as to that which had lately occurred, or 
even make allusion to it as a theme for conversation. 
Such men are rare in any age or any country ; and 
why should they not be popular ? 

Walter Trafford’s adventure of the later hours of 
that night must have been successful — it is well to 
say in this place — proving that a stumble, and even 
a fall, may be rather a good omen than otherwise, in 


Jock 0* Hazeldean in War-Time. 301 

corroboration of the old adage. For there was a fair 
young bride with him, only a few days following, in 
Philadelphia, and throughout the gayeties of that 
winter. Of this the commander-in-chief could not 
well know anything, even if the intelligence could 
have possessed any interest to a mind bearing the 
weight of a nation’s destinies ; but Colonel George 
Vernon may have possibly learned so much from 
the lips of Catharine Trafford, her own information 
obtained through some of those mysterious channels 
with which Captain Anstruther and herself had at 
once the most intimate and the least satisfactory 
acquaintance. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE MELTING OF THE SNOWS. 

Attention need not be called anew to the fact — 
several times alluded to in this chronicle and sub- 
stantiated alike by the history of the period and the 
relations of those who were sharers in the events of 
it — that the winter of 1777-8 had been one of much 
severity, the snow lying thickly over the wide expanse 
of the Middle States during most of the three months 
properly embraced within the designation, the storms 
of the period many and heavy, and the sufferings of 
Washington’s forces at Valley Forge, as well as those 
of the outlying bodies defending the cause at one and 
another point of importance, being materially added 
to by this arctic severity. That the same severity 
produced more or less effect upon the British forces, 
in garrison or elsewhere, is undeniable ; but history 
need not be referred to as a reminder of the fact that 
throughout the war those troops, whether native or 
mercenary, were better cared for and more fully sup- 
plied with the necessary preventives against cold 
and hunger, than those fighting the battles of the 
infant nation. It could not well have been otherwise 
— the partisans of freedom, in any struggle, literally 
“ fighting with ropes around their necks ” up to a 
certain period, and the old apothegm of the “ king’s 
name ” being a “ tower of strength ” having at least 
a qualified appreciation in all such conflicts. 

It has been freely said, here as well as in relations 


The Melting of the Snows. 303 

preceding, that during the winter of Valley Forge the 
condition of the patriot troops, in commissariat as in 
health, did much to awaken that discontent leading 
to the cabal, some of the operations of which we have 
been permitted to witness — the charge that the 
commander-in-chief misused his opportunities in the 
important detail of procuring comfort for his soldiers 
— the allegation that in the hands of some com- 
mander less raised above his soldiery by aristocratic 
pride and luxurious habits, that comfort would be 
better secured for the burden-bearing and suffering 
rank and file. Something to disprove this alleged 
thoughtlessness, if not heartlessness, of the com- 
mander-in-chief, had certainly been done in his re- 
fusal, already recorded, to occupy his own head-quar- 
ters until his command should be hutted as nearly 
in comfort as the very limited opportunities allowed ; 
something more was done in the knowledge which 
occasionally crept out, though it probably never be- 
came general, that the funds for carrying-on that 
poor and ill-appointed little hospital on the Phoenix- 
ville road, were more than once added to by con- 
tributions from the then severely depleted finances 
of the general, or from the temporarily limited pin- 
money of “ Lady Washington ; ” and perhaps the 
most important blow of all, in that direction, was 
struck in the single incident of one night during the 
late winter, when the cloaked commander, looking 
out for the safety of the encampment during some 
hours of sleepless unrest, came upon a shivering 
party of soldiers around a fire of logs in the open 
air, said some words of comforting pity to them, 
which made every man of the circle thereafter his 
willing slave, and bound up the broken spirits and 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


304 

the disabled arm of a poor little drummer-boy who 
had been wounded at Germantown and recovered 
but slowly, by half-a-dozen utterances which made 
the diminutive hero twice a hero for the future, and 
the proudest of men in the days when the war was 
over, and to have been commended by the Father 
of his Country was the best recognized patent of 
nobility. 

All this beyond a doubt ; and yet the suffering of 
that winter, everywhere among the patriot forces, and 
especially at Valley Forge, was a thing not then to 
be ignored, and not now to be undervalued. Very 
different was even the comfortable house of Isaac 
Potts, from the quarters in which the hero who princi- 
pally occupied it, would have found himself through- 
out those blinding storms of winter, had not the 
black shadow of war been extended over the land, 
and the duty of saving an army and founding a nation 
rested upon his anxious head and yet erect shoulders. 
Very different were the quarters occupied by grim 
and quaint German Steuben, from even the worst that 
he had known when fighting the battles of the Great 
Frederick, — and those of Lafayette from alternatives 
which he might so easily have held, in holiday com- 
mand though preparing for the great combat of 
Europe, in the French army at home. Very inferior 
were the facilities enjoyed by that rapid and facile 
young penman, aid to the chief at an age when most 
boys of his condition would have been at school — 
Alexander Hamilton, of Scotland, France and the 
West Indies — in the tracing of those papers which 
the master-mind conceived and his own elaborated, — 
to what might well have been at his command in any 
other branch of service entered upon by his invalu- 


The Melting of the Snows. 


305 


able facility accompanying almost universal genius. 
And very rarely have artists, making their first ven- 
tures in the field of pictorial delineation, found such 
uncongenial studios as that of Charles Wilson Peale, 
afterward to be known as the “first painter of Wash- 
ington,” who during that sad and- suffering winter 
kept alive the divine fire of his art, working with 
stiffened colors and worse stiffened fingers, in an 
out-house not far from the commander’s quarters, 
where the blaze of logs in the fireplace once devoted 
to the heating of water for weekly washings, could 
not prevent the benumbing that came in from the 
snowy air through the ill-fitting clapboards and the 
patched window. 

''But here an end ; though the task is no easy one, 
once entered upon this field of remembrance, for the 
writer, who seems to supply a single link between 
that day and the present, to check the course of 
narration and speculation that might well become 
the garrulity of age. What need of more pictures of 
the deprivation and suffering of this supreme moment 
of the Revolution..? — few as those given have been in 
comparison with the opportunities afforded, and faint 
and unsatisfactory as may have been the personal- 
ities presented, compared with what some soldier- 
romancer might have pictured, telling to after-days 
those memorable events, “ all of which he saw, and 
part of which he was } 

For we have done with Valley Forge. The events 
of that special winter must melt away, with the snows 
so long covering the wild hills along the Schuylkill, 
and those over which the tall pines moaned in the 
winter wind, many leagues away on the wooded 
plains of predestined Monmouth. 


3o6 


The Spur of Mo7i77iouth. 


While those snows were melting, Sir William 
Howe, thoroughly tired of dainty Philadelphia, was 
preparing to return to England and to the baronial 
duties there calling him. While those snows were 
melting. Sir Henry Clinton, son of the distinguished 
admiral of that name, and grandson of Francis 
Fiennes Clinton, Earl of Lincoln (that earldom after 
to become the ducal house of Newcastle) was under- 
going that course of mental and physical training 
which could enable his luxurious mind and adipose 
body to forsake a much easier position and bear the 
ennui and fatigue connected with the command of 
the royal army in America, assumed by him a few 
weeks later. While those snows were melting, France 
was hurrying forward, at last, that fleet and those 
delayed troops for the assistance of the patriot cause, 
whose coming eventually did so much in the way of 
material aid, but even more in the moral prestige 
afforded by the adherence of England’s immemorial 
rival. While those snows were melting, Benjamin 
Franklin, philosopher and plenipotentiary, was paus- 
ing in the moment following his great diplomatic 
success at Versailles, to rub his capacious hands and 
do a little appropriate chuckling over jealousies 
allayed and advantages secured to his country, in 
the acknowledgment of her independence,— before 
allowing himself to listen anew to the seductive 
whispers of the nymphs of the court of Marie 
Antoinette — eager to captivate the “wise and won- 
derful old savage.” 

While those snows were melting. Great Britain was 
preparing to send over to America, and actually send- 
ing over, those three commissioners, the Earl of 
Carlisle, Governor Johnstone, and Sir William Eden, 


The Melting of the Stioivs. 307 

ostensibly charged with a last effort at negotiation 
with the patriot authorities and so-called govern- 
ment, but really (as afterward did “ more fully and at 
large appear”) freighted more with gold than diplo- 
macy, for the corruption of any and all who could be 
induced to change causes, and thus hasten a favor- 
able end of 3 conflict. 

While those snows were melting, the opposing 
forces, southward, in the Middle States, northward 
and eastward, may be said to have been generally 
lying in a state analogous to that of the hero in the 
balladic romance of so many nations — sword in 
hand, but inert and immovable, waiting for that 
trumpet-blast destined to set the iron heel and the 
armed hand in motion ; conscious of great and de- 
cisive movements soon to follow, but as yet in the 
mists of uncertainty and anxiety, both as to duty and 
event. While those snows were melting, the cabal 
against Washington, if it did not actually die, fell into 
a moribund condition, neither promising to the am- 
bitious hopes of Charles Lee, Gates, or Conway, or 
the destructive aspirations of Captain John Andre 
and his alternate Captain Anstruther. 

While those snows were melting, that came to the 
knowledge of Catharine Trafford, which only comes 
to a woman once in life, and which often changes 
the whole course of her existence, for good, for ill, or 
that indefinable blending of both which no human 
mind may measure. And while those snows were 
melting, and the Jersey fields being prepared alike for 
the harvest of the coming season and for that other 
and bloodier harvest there to be reapt correspond- 
ingly,— that was occurring in the fortunes of Indian 
John, Bessie Wayne, Richard Foy and others of the 


.308 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


characters figuring in this drama of revolutionary 
life, the details and results of which must now be 
rapidly traced, in those events preceding and accom- 
panying the Summer of Monmouth following the 
Winter of Valley Forge. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 


THE PLACE OF SWEETNESS, WHERE NO SWEETNESS 
WAS. 

Far back in the progress of this narration, has 
been seen the night-attack by Huyler’s Men, in their 
armed boats, upon the British corvette, the Stag- 
hound, lying in Coney Island Bay, — with the destruc- 
tion of that vessel and so many hard silver dollars 
that good Captain Adam Huyler would have been 
glad to put in pouch for himself and his brother-ad- 
venturers ; the share borne by “ Daredevil Tom 
Wayne ” in that rash though no doubt well-con- 
sidered enterprise, and the melancholy pendant of 
that adventure. This was found in the capture by 
the British forces of poor young Walter Hartshorne, 
the nephew and heir of the Patroon and pride of the 
Navesink Highlands, of Tom Wayne himself, and 
four others of Huyler’s Men, — and the transference 
of all the captives to loathsome and hopeless con- 
finement in that place which seemed to unite all the 
possibilities of the satirical in name and location — 
the Sugar House, on Liberty Street ! 

As most readers even of Revolutionary history 
well know, the number of captives in the hands of 
the British, after the Battle of Long Island and 
taking of the city of New York, with the arrests for 
treason that followed, was very large and formidable, 
during the remainder of 1776, the whole of 1777 and 


310 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


1778, after the .last of which years exchanges very 
materially thinned those left behind by death and 
transference to other , quarters. It is also generally 
well remembered, that a number of buildings were 
necessarily employed, other than those which had in 
the ante-war times supplied the city with places of 
confinement. Beside the Provost’s Jail, in the City 
Hall Park (in some regards remembered by the 
prisoners as the very worst of all the places of de- 
tention), were employed the Sugar House, a five- 
story building on Liberty Street, immediately east- 
ward and almost adjoining the Middle Dutch Church 
on Liberty and Nassau streets (for so many years 
and until lately, the Post-Office) ; Rhinelander’s 
Sugar House, on the corner of William and Duane 
streets; Van Cortlandt’s, at the northwest corner of 
Trinity Churchyard; the Middle and North Dutch 
churches (the latter at William and Fulton, only 
lately fallen before the blows of commercial demand) ; 
the Presbyterian Church on Wall Street, the Scotch 
on Cedar, the French on Pine, the Friends’ Meeting- 
house on Liberty,— these, and even other places of 
confinement were improvised, it being notable, 
meanwhile, that due respect was paid to the “ Estab- 
lishment,” in the retaining, as churches, of Trinity, 
St. Paul s, St. George s and St. John’s, the venerated 
strongholds of episcopacy. 

Only with the Sugar House, however, have we any- 
thing to do in the present chronicle, and even with 
that ill-omened building the connection must be but 
brief and hurried. Only one of those in whom we 
have any special interest, came into that place of 
imprisonment — young Walter Hartshorne. For, 
terrible as the Sugar Houses and their supplementary 


The Place of Sweelfiess. 3-1 1 

t 

buildings may have been, there were even worse 
places of imprisonment, provided by malice or in- 
competence. Even more foul as a stain upon the 
page of history, than the Liberty Street Sugar 
House, stand the Prison Ships, originally intended 
for the confinement of captured sailors, but used 
indiscriminately with the land prisons in many in- 
stances. — moored in the Wallabout (now the site of 
the Brooklyn Navy Yard), and in the Whitby, Hunter, 
Prince of Wales, Good Hope, Scorpion, Stromboli and 
others, with the Jersey to crown all and outlast all, 
— ever after, and to some extent even to this day, 
filling the memory of revenge and the mouth of 
reprobation. To that dismal hulk, the Whitby, then 
occupying the principal station, it was the fate of 
“ Daredevil Tom Wayne ” to be removed, almost im- 
mediately after his capture (as we may have further 
early and painful occasion to know), partially because 
he was considered a sailor, as his companion was 
not, — and partially because twenty-four hours could 
not elapse without the gay and reckless fellow 
awaking the anger, and consequently the revenge 
of a certain sort, of the terrible Provost-Marshal. 
Since the arrival of the prisoners, there had not even 
been the possibility of communication between Tom 
Wayne and his dearly-loved boy brother-in-arms. 
So that there was not even the comradery of suffer- 
ing possible between the two — so that, for the time 
(ah, not for long !) the elder prisoner passes entirely 
from sight, and we have only to do with the gallant 
and imprudent youngster of the Navesink High- 
lands. , 

But before entering more closely upon the events 
connected with the career of the youthful prisoner 


312 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


while in British hands, — it becomes necessary to say 
a word that never can be so well said elsewhere, and 
never so appropriately at any time following the 
Centennial which should also be a Jubilee, with 
reference to those imprisonments already character- 
ized in indignant words, and during a whole century 
supplying so much of fierce denunciation to the 
enthusiastic, the unthinking and the demagogue. 

Most certainly, during the periods already named, 
there were held in those places so characterized, and 
in others now passed from recollection as from per- 
sonal memory, hundred upon hundred, thousand 
upon thousand, of patriots who were paying that 
fearful price for even the attempt to achieve the 
privilege of self-government. Equally certain is it 
that those prisoners met the reverse of good treat- 
ment at the hands of the British military authorities 
— that almost all the comforts and many of the 
decencies of life were denied them — that they had 
hard masters, and in many regards cruel ones, in Pro- 
vost-Marshal Cunningham, and Loring, Sproat and 
Lennox, succeeding commissaries of prisoners, who 
came, not unnaturally, to be incarnations of demoniac 
qualities in the minds and the descriptions of those 
who had suffered under them, and the many others 
W'ho had lost relatives and friends in that fatal im- 
prisonment. That the food and water were often 
scanty and generally bad, with exercise debarred and 
medicines often unattainable, leading to emaciation, 
disease, and a fearful amount of deaths in proportion 
to the numbers in confinement. And that, ending 
all, the sepulture of those poor sufferers for liberty 
was of the most reckless and often of the most 
shameless character, filling the old Potter’s Field 


The Place of Sweetness. 


313 


with uncared-for and unrecognizable bones, long 
after to be gathered up with a certain solemnity and 
deposited beneath the Martyrs’ Memorial in Trinity 
Churchyard. 

All this of a truth ; and few men, now living, have 
more abiding cause to recall the sulferings then and 
there endured by the patriots, than he into whose 
ears were poured, half a century ago, so many rela- 
tions of those painful days, from lips that seemed 
even then scarcely to have ceased quivering with the 
anguish of personal pain or family bereavement. 

These, and a thousand similar relations, may well 
have left an impression on the minds of sympathetic 
hearers, that the “Black Hole of Calcutta ’’was not 
confined to any single spot of the earth’s surface — 
that the compelling forces of civilization were not 
always powerful enough to put away the cruel in- 
stincts of the natural savage. 

And yet — let the truth be boldly uttered — there 
is no tree, of all those fallen throughout the world’s 
history, that may with more propriety be allowed to 
lie as it fell, than this of the treatment of the cap- 
tive prisoners by the victorious enemy. Was it, in 
this case, cruel, heartless, sometimes even demoniac } 
Doubtless, all concurrent testimony leading to that 
painful conclusion. But where and when has it not 
been so, throughout the long centuries in which wars 
have been foughten, and victors have triumphed, 
and the vanquished borne the weight of political 
hatreds as well as personal revenges ? When have 
belligerent nations been willing to buy back their 
own wounded and debilitated, by exchange, when for 
them they must release so many able-bodied and 
dangerous of the enemy ? When, in short, have the 

14 


314 The spur of Monmouth. 

maxims and the practices of social life, with Chris- 
tianity their extreme and culmination, been applied 
to the dealing of one people with another, the hand 
at the throat and the issue of life or death perhaps 
involved in that of victory or defeat? However 
necessary, or apparently so, it may at times become, 
in the breaking of chains from the fettered limbs of 
a nation, or the defense of another from the hand 
that would maim and despoil it, — let it not be for- 
gotten that war is the trade of the internals ; that 
every worst passion in the human heart is exalted 
by it, at the expense of every gentle and tender im- 
pulse bringing humanity nearer to the angels ; that 
he is generally held best to have done his duty in the 
field and those severities following it, who has done 
most toward trampling out the foe with the cause he 
has been combating, and so making further or re- 
newed hostilities impossible. Yet more surely is the 
pen estopped from anathematizing even the dark 
deeds of the “place of sweetness where no sweet- 
ness was,” the New York Sugar House and its 
dependencies, within the decade which sees the 
mutual accusations of the Libby Prison, Fort La- 
fayette, Andersonville and Johnson’s Island ! 

Even if the course of this narration involved the 
worst sufferings of the Sugar House, it is only truth 
to say that with young Walter Hartshorne they 
would have very little connection. Though he had 
the ill fortune to come into captivity at the heels of 
the destruction of the Staghound, and thus in the 
midst of the anger on the part of the royalists. In- 
evitable as following such a reverse, — and though he 
might well have met with some demonstration of the 
hatred borne by the British against Huyler’s Men, 


The Place of Sweetness. 315 

whom they regarded rather as marine thieves and 
robbers than legitimate combatants, — he had the 
balancing good fortune not to be thrust into the 
Sugar House amid an indiscriminate mass of cap- 
tives, and so to preserve any advantage of his per- 
sonality, which might so easily have been swallowed 
up in the midst of rough numbers. 

The young Patroon was, as may be remembered, 
but a fragile-looking boy of eighteen — little likely 
to be regarded as a dangerous combatant-in-arms ; 
exceedingly handsome, with that indefinable grace 
superadded, so certain (in spite of the sneers of the 
ultra-democracy) to spring from long generations of 
gentle blood, with the breeding and occupations 
thereunto belonging. What there lay of iron deter- 
mination beneath the luxurious softness and attrac- 
tive beauty of the boy, lay hidden deep enough to 
escape any ordinary eye ; and this advantage of the 
“iron hand within the velvet glove,” always a boon 
of no secondary value in dealing with the world, 
had a special and peculiar importance in this memor- 
able instance. 

But a single day elapsed, as it chanced, after his 
incarceration in the Sugar House, when became into 
collision with the Provost Cunningham, and that 
occurred which thereafter set the status of both in 
dealing with each other. Passing through the im- 
provised gallery, by no means the worst in the build- 
ing, into which the boy had been rather thrust than 
placed, with a pallet of mouldy straw and scarcely an 
apology for bed-clothing,— the Provost stumbled, on 
that second morning, over something that had ap- 
parently fallen from young Hartshorne’s pallet, or 
been placed on the floor by him in sheer disregard of 


3i6 The Spur of Monmouth. 

the severe rules of the prison. Neither knowing, 
nor i-ndeed caring for the identity of the transgressor, 
Cunningham, painfully remembered to have been 
always brutally free with his hands as well as his 
feet, lifted his fist to strike the slight figure that he 
saw before him. But the blow, though suspended in 
air, if an impalpability can be so suspended, did not 
fall. Two or three of the patriot prisoners then 
present, recollected well and afterward related, how 
they saw the face of the boy turn quickly, as if the 
consciousness that he was about being struck com- 
municated itself without the actual aid of the senses ; 
how something like blue lightning came out of the 
eyes, flashed full in those of Cunningham, and 
seemed to have the momentary effect of blinding 
quite as much as surprising him ; how the upraised 
hand of the violent man fell to his side, and with a 
curse he passed on, his ferocity for the instant 
curbed, as it might not have been by any one of the 
grown men, hardy and dangerous though ill-used 
and in suffering, of the many hundreds under his 
charge. 

Thereafter, some of those who had witnessed this 
rencontre and felt a certain curiosity as to what 
might follow, saw the Provost two or three times, in 
his rounds, pausing to look at the stripling with a 
certain something in his eye that, as they thought, 
might have boded no good to the object of his re- 
gard. But they never heard him address him ; and 
it is probable that he never did so, either with the 
rough abuse that was his habit, or that comparative 
kindness into which he had (spite of the denial of 
many of his victims) the capacity of sometimes fall- 
ing as a variety. Well for both, undoubtedly, that it 


The Place of Sweetness. 317 

was so ; for had it been otherwise, the soul pf the 
defied Provost would undoubtedly have been dark- 
ened with a murder, committed in the heat of pas- 
sion, little less pitiful than that of the Princes in the 
Tower, — and there would have been mourning on 
the Navesink Highlands, scarcely less melancholy 
than that of Rachel for those who “ were not.” 

The Sugar-House was a prison, however — a prison, 
with all the painful and terrible characteristics that 
have been ascribed to it. Strong men sickened and 
died under the confinement and the privations : how 
could the high-spirited boy, with his bodily strength 
as yet only half matured, hope to escape the com- 
mon fate? With fewer words of complaint than 
those falling from the lips of other sufferers around 
him (this, too, was well remembered and commented 
upon in after days), Walter Hartshorne hungered, 
thirsted, revolted at the dreadful food set to mock 
life, shivered in the wintry air that had no ame- 
lioration except the deadly warmth of commingled 
human breath, then sickened and lay down on his 
miserable pallet to die. The Patroon was to have no 
heir remaining; the dear mother that bore so noble 
a son was never again to kiss the lips of her darling 
or caress the sunny curls that had once made the 
very pride of her eyes ; the young patriot was to die 
for the cause, as- other and older men were dying — 
to die, bravely, uselessly, pitifully. 

Then one day a British officer passed through that 
gallery of the prison — probably no more aware of 
the errand upon which he really came, than is the 
ray of spring sunshine that lifts the half-drowned 
head of the flower, or the blast from the north-west 
that prostrates the oak of centuries. He was colonel 


The spur of Mo7imouth, 


318 

of one of the regiments principally recruited in the 
north of England, and owned one of those names the 
very sound of which tells of the days of chivalry and 
the long conflicts of the borders. Doubtless there 
was no braver soldier following the banner of King 
George than Colonel Mowbray, afterward, and under 
another name, well known in the history of his home- 
land ; and yet he had many of those characteristics 
which have puzzled the outer w.orld, in the character 
of the English soldier of rank and fortune. From 
the first day of his arrival in America, those who 
knew him well averred, to the day when at last he 
abandoned a failing cause and went home to enjoy 
a title and honors, — Colonel Mowbray never looked 
upon the struggle between Great Britain and her 
colonies as anything else than a jest; an extensive 
and costly jest, possibly, yet still a jest. Success in 
the contest, in behalf the royal arms, was a foregone 
conclusion — the thing was only a question of time. 
No one need put himself much out of the way to 

secure an end no more difficult. A little fighting 

possibly a considerable amount of that, and to that 
he had no objection whatever — this only was neces- 
sary. The coming over of himself and his regiment 
was rather a frolic than otherwise, as he regarded it. 
Of such a frolic, his young wife, the daughter of a 
northern baron, was well entitled to her share, as he 
believed ; and consequently she accompanied her 
gay, brave and popular husband. A house then of 
some prominence, standing not far from what is now 
Greenwich street at the intersection of Cortlandt, 
and still remaining within the recollection of many 
observant graybeards, afforded the gallant colonel 
a residence during some three years of the occupa- 


The Place of Sweetness. • 319 

tion of New York ; and scarcely the head-quarters of 
the Commander-in-chief himself afforded a more 
pleasing nucleus around which could gather the 
flower of royalist society, than the abode graced by 
the presence of the fascinating lady who called the 
genial colonel husband. 

This Colonel Mowbray it was, who, passing by the 
pallets of the line of invalid prisoners, one day when 
some weeks had elapsed after the burning of the 
Staghound, found himself arrested opposite that on 
which lay the noble boy from the Navesink High- 
lands. He saw the thin and suffering yet notable face, 
surmounting a form so far beneath the stature and 
roundness of full manhood ; he saw the fine eye, some- 
what dimmed by disease and sunken in emaciation, 
yet speaking as eloquently of the brave soul within, 
as it could have done when full of the light of health 
and hope” he found himself fascinated, even as the 
Provost had done, and yet how differently, by some- 
thing so far beyond the common order of captivity: 
and then that in the British colonel stirred, which 
might have been comparatively lacking in the aver- 
age of his brother officers, aye, in the average of his 
opponents — the high pity of a true humanity. 

Without a word to the stripling sufferer. Colonel 
Mowbray on that occasion turned away and left the 
Sugar-House, within which his errand of duty had 
been changed to one so much higher and holier. In 
what direction his steps were immediately bent, is of 
little consequence to the course of this narration. 
That they may have carried him into the presence of 
the Provost Cunningham, is very possible ; but they 
may have borne him as \yell into that of the Com- 
manding-General. At all events, no idle and sickly 


320 


The spur of Mojmtouth. 


sympathy was his; for within the next two hours a 
litter bore the debilitated owner of the proud eyes 
and the emaciated face to the residence of Colonel 
Mowbray; and half an hour later, the sufferer clothed 
and cared for as became his condition, Mistress 
Mowbray was bending over him with a tenderness 
born of her husband’s suggestions but nurtured by 
her own sweet womanly nature — smoothing the 
clustering curls, and wishing that he was not quite 
so old, that she might kiss the pure forehead which 
reminded her of a stripling brother of her own, far 
away beyond sea. 

Such, and so brought about, was Walter Harts- 
horne’s farewell to the Sugar-House — a farewell for 
all time, as he could not know but may dimly have 
hoped. Such was the deed, certainly out of the com- 
mon, and wayward as many others of his actions, of 
the British colonel, who undoubtedly must have used 
a strong personal and family influence to secure the 
removal of the “young rebel.” A deed most erratic, 
and probably such a one as no other officer in the 
royal army would have dreamed of doing, except 
under a bid for official censure and eventual admis- 
sion to a madhouse,— but one over which, at that 
stage of the proceeding, voices may have been 
sounding in the far upper-air, unheard by any of 
the ears of earth, but echoing in blessing the sweetly 
solemn words of the Master : “ Insomuch as ye did 
it to the least of these little ones, ye did unto Me.” 


CHAPTER XXXII 

PAROLE D’HONNEUR, EN VERITE. 

Young as was Walter Hartshorne at the important 
crisis in his existence covered by the months of his 
captivity, it is not to be supposed that he was, with 
his education and the years of struggle through 
which his native land had been passing, so ignorant 
of the usages of war as to mistake the one disad- 
vantage in which he was placed by the action of 
Colonel Mowbray — if that was indeed a disadvan- 
tage which continued him in life when without it he 
must soon have been among those carried away to 
the Potter’s Field. Granting continued life and any 
opportunity, he would have been free, while suffer- 
ing imprisonment in the Sugar-House, to effect his 
escape if possible : sheltered and cared for by the 
chivalrous colonel, in his own house, and treated 
more like a member of his family than as a foe, he 
was a prisoner without hope ! 

Man-in-boyhood as he was, in contradistinction to 
so many of the boys-in-manhood who fill no small 
space in the everyday world, this thought came to 
the young Patroon within a few hours after his re- 
moval to the house of his benefactor — so soon, 
indeed, as the kind care bestowed upon him, and the 
generous food taking the place of the nauseous com- 
pounds of the prison, assisted the life-currents to 
flow back into his young veins and restored him full 

14* 


322 The Spur of Monmouth. 

capacity for thought. Oh, how he wished, the moment 
after fully comprehending the new situation, that he 
could be very differently circumstanced! — that he 
might be in the hands of some needy and craving 
wretch, instead of the high-toned and generous gen- 
tleman who had really become his bondsman and 
surety — so that he might use some of the wealth of 
his family, which would be so freely poured out for 
his ransom ! For a few moments, no doubt, after 
the whole thought of this came to him, there may 
have been a half-formed resolution to break the 
chain of captivity at all hazards — to restore to his 
bereaved mother that sleep of contentment of which 
he knew only too well that she had been deprived 
since the knowledge of his capture had come to her 
— to put himself once more at liberty in his native 
highland woods and on the broad waters of bay and 
river, or die in the attempt. This, most especially, 
when from the window of the chamber in which he 
was lodged, he saw the near flashing of the Hudson, 
stretching away toward the State of his nativity. 
But no! — a thousand times no! — when such an 
attainment of liberty, if practicable, must leave his 
young honor stained, and the man who had trusted 
him to bear the consequences of his rare generosity ! 

Perhaps Colonel Mowbray, used to the surprises 
of both society and war, had never known one more 
completely outrunning all his calculations, than 
when his young captive, three days after his re- 
moval from the Sugar-House, and when he was not 
yet strong enough to leave his chamber— took ad- 
vantage of his looking in to enquire after his welfare 
and say a kind word to him,— to manifest his knowl- 
edge of the position in which he stood, and to assure 


Parole d'Honneiir. 


323 


his kindly jailer that he knew himself, now, a pris- 
oner on the true parole of honor, and would be faith- 
ful to the confidence reposed in him. 

“ Why, God bless my soul, young fellow ! ” said 
the astonished colonel, who really, up to that time, 
had scarcely thought of the questions of parole or 
escape, as connected with one so immature in years 
and giving so few evidences of being able to endure 
hardships of any importance — “do you know that 
you are talking like a hardened old veteran ? What 
chance have you of escaping, even if you did choose 
to play false to yourself — as I see that you would do, 
much more than to me, in breaking bounds and giv- 
ing us what the criminal prisoners call ‘leg bail?' 
Why, this island is sentried, by day and by night, at 
distances of only a few yards. You could scarcely 
swim to the Jersey shore, I think, had you many 
more years and much more of strength ; and of 
course the getting of a boat is out of the question, 
under such a watch as our fellows keep, even if 
you could manage it without assistance. No, my 
poor boy — I do not think that there is much chance 
of your leaving me in any awkward position, even if 
you should choose to do so.’' 

“ You may depend, sir,” was the reply of the strip- 
ling, “that though I would almost give my life to see 
my mother and stop her anxiety about me, I would 
quite give it before I would prove ungrateful to 
you! ” 

“Heaven bless you! — yes, I believe that you 
would ! You need not assure me, again, that you 
come of a race of gentlemen, for you prove it ! ” en- 
thusiastically spoke the colonel. 

“Thank you, sir, for understanding me — for I 


324 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


don’t know that men always do understand boys ! ” 
said the boy-gentleman. “ But you have been so 
good to me, sir, that I wish to make you feel that I 
appreciate how much more you have done for me 
than any other person, fighting against usf and he 
spoke that word very proudly and emphatically, 
“would have done, and that I know my duty towards 
' you and will do it.” 

“ Not a doubt of it, my boy ! — not a doubt of it ! ” 
spoke the colonel. “ I would have trusted you, 
before, without any reference to the difficulty of 
getting away : now I would trust you as I would my- 
self — confound it, a thousand times further, I’ve an 
idea ; for our English heads do not always stop to 
calculate so closely as your Yankee noddles, it seems, 
even when there is no beard on the lower end of 
them.” “ I am not a Yankee, sir,” was the only 
reply of the young Patroon to this. 

“ God bless me ! — what ? You are not a Yankee ? 
What do you mean ? It cannot be possible that we 
have been shutting up an English boy in the Sugar- 
House ! ” excitedly exclaimed the officer. 

Oh, no sir — I was born in this country, and so 
was my father, and so was my grandfather,” replied 
Walter. “ I was born in New Jersey, and Jerseymen 
do not call themselves Yankees— only the people of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut and the other States 
eastward : didn’t you know that? ” 

The first smile that the British colonel had seen 
on the face of his singular charge, glimmered there 
for a moment as he made this correction — a correc- 
tion not seldom made now-a-days, but rarely haz- 
arded in that early time of the nation, as we may well 
believe. 


Parole d' Honneur. 


325 


“Not a Yankee, and yet born in this country? 
Then what are you, pray ? Certainly you have no 
native blood,” said the puzzled Briton.* 

“ I am a Jerseyman, sir ! ” was the reply — some- 
thing more of convincing pride in the tone than the 
young fellow might have manifested, could he have 
looked through the mists of the coming century and 
read the words in which the little State of Trenton, 
Princeton, Monmouth and Morristown was to be 
habitually, however thoughtlessly, berated and un- 
dervalued. 

“Ah, a Jerseyman. Well, you are a noble young 
fellow, at all events ; and I only wish that your — 
what’s that you call it? — State, or any State, had 
more like you, even if they were enemies of King 
George!” exclaimed the colonel; then adding: “So 
you wish to consider yourself on parole, do you ? So 
be it ; till possibly we can find a chance to exchange 
you, if your people ever catch one of our youngsters ; 
and then you can go home to the mother who ought 
to be as proud of you as a female peacock — if there 
is such a thing, which I doubt.” 

“Thank you, sir, and you may depend upon my 
keeping my parolel' said young Walter, with a cer- 
tain emphasis on the concluding word, as if he found 
a little addition to his years and importance in the 
thought of holding that position in the eyes of the 
national enemy ! 

Thenceforth, for the little time really remaining in 
the purview of this narration. Colonel Mowbray and 
his wife had rather a guest than a hostage in the 
person of the young Jerseyman. Within a few days, 
under the influence of good food, healthy air, and 
kindly treatment in every regard, the hollow cheeks 


326 


The spur of Monmouth. 


began to fill again, and the speaking blue eyes to tell 
of something else than mere endurance. Necessarily, 
Walter went "out but little — went away from the 
friendly house sheltering him, scarcely at all, the 
possibility of ill-usage on the part of some of the 
armed sentries or partisans who might chance to 
recognize him, being very obvious even to the un- 
forn id prudence of extreme youth. 

Once, with the occasional rashness belonging to 
such a nature as has been feebly depicted, and with 
that interest in all whom he had known necessarily 
forming a part of it — the young Patroon attempted 
to pay a visit to his fellow-captives remaining in the 
Sugar-House. What might have been the result, had 
he rp'^lly effected an entrance, is not too sure ; for 
Col ^ ^ Mowbray was then temporarily absent on 
sho fervice, and there might have been no one to 
stand between the too-curious youngster and the 
consequences of his imprudently thrusting himself 
again between hated and loathsome walls once nar- 
rowly escaped. Fortunately, perhaps, for him, the 
sentry at the door had no orders to admit any one 
not in an official character, and he had no fancy for 
awakening the wrath of Provost Cunningham by 
going a step into the unauthorized. He barred the 
way with his musket, with language not too respect- 
ful ; and Walter went back to his place of parole, a 
lift e ^.irker at heart than he had started on the ad- 
venture, and possibly with his pockets heavier than 
he wished, by a few poor coins, that he had intended 
to minister to those who might have bought with 
them some trifling comfort or mercy for “ Huyler’s 
Men.” 

It has been said that from the windows of his 


Parole d' Honneur. 


327 


chamber, the captive saw the Hudson, without diffi- 
culty. Only straggling houses, and those of no 
great height, then stood between the colonel’s resi- 
dence and the river. As he grew stronger, he saw 
the water more nearly — wandering occasionally down 
to the unoccupied and ricketty docks, near where 
now stand the Cortlandt Street ferry-houses — look- 
ing off at the stream that flowed by, rememl ^ring 
that the very waves which he saw would poss.bly 
wdthin a few hours kiss the foot of his beloved High- 
lands ; remembering, too, that the shores which he saw 
opposite, with the bold height of Castle Point only 
a little above, were part of his own native State, only 
two days’ journey by land or a few hours by water ; 
and yet fettered as closely against any movement 
toward his home, as if a veritable chain 1 r- been 
around his limbs, fastening him to stone il. or 
oaken post. 

Then the eyes that had been temporarily filled with 
a more hopeful light, grew dull and clouded again; 
the food, for a few days so appetizing, began again to 
pall and grow tasteless ; bome-sickness was seizing 
him, perhaps even more intensely than it had done 
amid the hopeless suffering of the Sugar-House. 
The kind lady of Colonel Mowbray, herself thus far 
childless (thank the Divine Lover of the little children 
that she did not for many years remain so !) sawithat 
the lad was once more growing sick at beer .-^-sick 
as the caged eagle is sure to grow, even if thu caged 
robin may apparently thrive, and sing sweet songs, 
in his captivity. Colonel Mowbray, coming back 
from his brief service up the river, saw the change 
and understood it. He attempted to amuse the 
young fellow with the few books at command, and 


328 The spur of Monmotith. 

with games when his own leisure permitted. Walter 
looked over the books, with evident thankfulness 
for the indulgence, joined in the games as an amiable 
automaton might have done, and fell back, the 
moment that the temporary excitement was over, 
into a voiceless and so uncomplaining despondency 
that promised, to the observant eye, the very worst 
consequences in the near future. 

So came the equinox of that year — one remem- 
bered and often spoken of, in the after days, as ex- 
ceptionally violent. The young Patroon had then 
been something more than two months a captive. 
By one of those awkward arrangements which seem 
not uncommon in this unmanageable world, a small 
party of the British officers and of loyalists living 
near,l:iad been set at Colonel Mowbray’s, for the 
evening of the twenty-first of March. The night fell, 
in wild wind and rain ; but the guests gathered with 
military promptness — on foot, or in the few chairs 
and other vehicles at command, through the half- 
paved and fearfully-muddy streets of a town even 
yet notable for the depth of its possibilities in that 
direction. Some of the officers, who chanced to be 
quartered near the water, in what was then the upper 
part of the cit3% came, cloaked beyond recognition 
by their worst enemies, in boats, intending to return 
by the same conveyances at the close of the festiv- 
ities. What, to them, or to any of the others, was 
the partial wetting of the arrival, when they were to 
meet the pleasant smiles of the amiable hostess, and 
to bask for a few hours in the. light of those eyes of 
loyalist girlhood which made endurable and enjoy- 
able their sojourn in the captured city? 

With equal feeling and judgment, Colonel Mow- 


Parole d' Homteur. 


329 


bray, aware that his honorable captive could not be 
otherwise than constrained in the presence of his 
royalist guests, not only from his position but in the 
lack of such personal adornments as would have 
been at his command at home, — had invited him to 
descend to the dancing-rooms if he wished to do so, 
but laid no positive injunction upon him to that 
effect. Well on in the evening, however, anxiety 
being expressed by some of the ladies present to see 
the young rebel hero whose name had already 
become an object of interest in the city, — the host 
went up to his chamber to ask the favor of his com- 
ing down, instead of sending a request, half-com- 
mand, as a less polished gentleman might have done. 
He found the chamber empty, and observed that a 
rough paletot, which he had himself given his invol- 
untary guest on his first coming, was also missing 
from the room. In a moment he understood a secret 
of temperament that might have been a mystery to 
many — understood that the sounds of music and 
dancing, coming up to the chamber of the young 
captive, had become unendurable in the suggestion 
of contrast they created, and that the stripling had 
gone,- as many another has done under similar cir- 
cumstances, out into the wild whirl of the storm as 
the best measure of relief for the overwrought feel- 
ings. 

Undoubtedly, when Colonel Mowbray, on that 
discovery, passed into his own apartment, threw 
around his shoulders his heavy military cloak, drew 
on cap and boots, and went out into the street where 
the storm was playing its mad antics, — he had but 
one thought; that the noble boy was recklessly ex- 
posing himself to the dangex of cold and sickness: 


330 


The spur of Monmouth, 


that he must be found and induced to return to shel- 
ter. Certainly no idea entered his mind, that any 
attempt had been made at escape, the stormy dark- 
ness of the night and the turmoil of the house being 
depended upon for the opportunity. Had he so 
thought, one recollection of the “ parole ” already 
recorded, would have been -sufficient to disabuse him 
of such an impression. So much should be said, 
here ; and so much should be implicitly believed. 

Out in the storm ; but where } A moment of ad- 
ditional thought answered that question. The young- 
ster had been born and reared on the coast ; the 
ocean and its branches formed to him a second life. 
He should find him by the river, drinking in conso- 
lation if not enjoyment from the conflict of winds 
and waters. 

He did find young Walter Hartshorne by the river, 
when he had splashed through the short distance 
necessary to reach the primitive docks. There was 
a dismal light from a feeble oil-lamp, at nearly oppo- 
site the foot of his own street and almost at the edge 
of the water. It flickered on two or three tossing 
boats, there tied by ropes, after having brought down 
guests to his house for the evening; and it flick- 
ered on the bent head of the poor young fellow, sit- 
ting on a pile of stones at the edge, wrapped in his 
paletot, and receiving the beating of the storm as if 
it had been the caresses of some dear friend attempt- 
ing to console him in his loneliness. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 


A WAIF ON THE WATERS. 

There are some impulses for which we could not 
account, by any effort, as there are others for which 
we would not, at any compulsion. It has already 
been said that Colonel Mowbray, missing the lad 
from his chamber, had no idea of his having at- 
tempted an escape ; much less could the British 
officer have contemplated the possibility of his as- 
sisting in any such breach of military discipline ! 
And yet, in that moment, he underwent one of those 
changes which partake of the medical phrase, 
" shock.” For a brief space he looked at the bent 
head and bowed figure, his own approach not having 
been heard, in the roar of the storm and the wash of 
the water against the piles of the pier. Then he laid 
his hand on the shoulder of the stripling, who in- 
stantly sprung to his feet, with a celerity proving 
that the bodily had not given way, even if the men- 
tal had momentarily succumbed. It needed a second 
glance before he recognized his host ; and when he 
did so he said, in the sad voice which had become 
habitual, in place of his once quick and frank ex- 
pression : 

“ I am sorry that you came out into the storm to 
look for me, sir. I suppose that I did wrong to come 
out ; but I will go back to the house if you wish.” 

“ Why do you sit here in the storm, making your- 


332 


The Sj)iir of Monmouth. 


self sick ? ” was the very natural enquiry of the 
colonel, in reply. 

“Why? Oh, I do not know, except that I seem 
to be nearer home, when I feel the wind and the rain.” 

“ Poor boy ! ” came half aloud from the lips of 
Colonel Mowbray ; and and he possibly did not 
sink to the ordinary level of profanity when he 
added, quite below his breath : “ Damn all wars, that 
shut up children and leave mothers crying for 
them ! ” 

There was silence for a moment, the young fellow 
standing before his kindly host in something of the 
attitude of a culprit, and wondering a little why, after 
all, he had come out from his guests, after him. Then 
the colonel asked a question that might have seemed 
quite unnecessary : 

“ Can you row ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“Well?” 

“ Yes, sir, very well. I was born on the coast, you 
remember.” 

“ You have no fear of the water, I suppose ? ” 

“No, sir, no fear, at any time. It has been my 
playfellow ever since I can remember. I love it 
dearly: that is why I came out, to be near it.” 

“ By God, I will ! ” broke from the lips of Colonel 
Mowbray, so loudly that his hearer could not avoid 
catching the exclamation that was certainly an ener- 
getic and might be an angry one. He was naturally 
startled, but merely said, enquiringly: 

“ Sir?” 

As he raised his head to make that interrogation, 
he saw the colonel glance quickly around him, ap- 
parently in different directions, as one conscious of 


A IVaif on the Waters. 


333 


criminal intent might have done. Young Walter was 
even more startled, though the positive quality of 
fear scarcely entered into his thoughts. His own 
glance following that of the other, showed that the 
nearest sentry had crept away from the storm and 
was not within sight — a fact that his consciousness 
took in without quite understanding why. Then his 
surprise culminated in his host seizing him by the 
shoulders, with both hands, and thrusting his head 
close down to his own. 

“Young man,” he said, “can I trust you to obey 
my orders } ” 

“ I think so — yes, sir,” was the surprised reply. 

“ Then do so, and ask no questions. You see that 
boat,” pointing to one that rocked very near and 
occasionally glimmered, from its motion, in the dull 
light of the lamp. “ If you were in it, could you reach 
the Jersey shore, over yonder, rough as the water is 
to-night } ” 

“I could — yes, sir; but you know — ” the sur- 
prised answer began. It was interrupted by the 
colonel, speaking quickly and hoarsely. 

“I understand; but don’t talk! You were to 
obey me : now do it. Get into that boat, and make 
your way across the river. Not a moment is to be 
lost ; for a sentry may come within sight, even in this 
storm.” 

“You mean for me to get away, sir! Oh, how I 
should like to do it, and go to see my mother! But 
you know — ” 

“Oh, I know! — it is that infernal parole that is 
troubling you ! ” broke out the colonel, in a voice 
almost equally shaken by feeling and impatience — 
not to say vexation at something that stood in the 


334 


The spur of Momnouth. 


way of his wish. “ Damn the parole ! — there is no 
such thing : I take it back. If you stay here, to-mor- 
row I shall shut you up — do you hear?” 

“ Oh, sir, do you mean that you will take back my 
parole, and make it honorable for me to get away if 
I can?” There was a wondering yet happy incre- 
dulity in the voice, that the other did not fail to 
catch. 

“I mean that— yes, anything and everything!” 
again broke out the colonel, impatiently, in the fear 
that valual^le time was being wasted. “The devil 
take such a youngster ! He promises to obey my 
orders, and then he hems and haws like a school- 
girl ! Do you understand me, or have you lost your 
wits all of a sudden ? / give yo7i back your parole. 
For these few minutes, there is nothing to prevent 
your trying to get away, as you call it, if you can. If 
/was you, and the night was dark, and a boat so 
near, and I could row as well as you say you can — ” 

Colonel Mowbray was suddenly interrupted, at 
this stage, by six words, that he never forgot till his 
dying day. 

“ May I go, to my mother? ” 

“Yes, in God's name, and be quick, or it may be 
too late, and I shall be shot as well as you ! ” 

The instant before, it had been evident that the 
young Patroon was all excitement in his new-dawn- 
ing hope ; but at those last words all changed. He 
stopped, almost as one stunned. 

“ I forgot ! You cannot let me go, sir ! They would 
shut you up in my place — perhaps worse.” 

“ Rubbish ! ” spoke the colonel, who, all the while, 
may have been a shade in doubt as to the applica- 
bility of the word. “ Rubbish ! shut me up — me, a 


A IVaif on the Waters. 


335 


British officer I Obey orders, quick, if you ever wish 
to see your mother; for, by the Lord, I coop you up 
like a chicken, to-morrow, if you stay, as too great a 
fool to run at large.” 

That moment Colonel Mowbray felt warm lips on 
his hand, and believed that tears added to the soft 
moisture. He on^y heard a low “ God bless you, sir,” 
in addition, and then he was alone. Only an instant 
seemed to have elapsed, and yet already a lithe form 
had climbed down the mouldering pier; it was in 
the boat ; the rope was loosened ; an oar was skilfully 
employed as a paddle at the side, so as to prevent 
such a noise as might have been made by rowing or 
sculling (ah, how well the young hunter of wild 
ducks knew the necessity and the mode of that pre- 
caution !) ; then the boat, the stripling, literally the 
whole affair, had disappeared into the night and the 
storm, and a colonel in His Majesty’s service had 
betrayed the trust confided to him and not only con- 
nived at but actually incited the escape of a prisoner- 
of-war ! 

It is not within the province of this chronicle, to 
narrate what thereafter occurred at the house of 
Colonel Mowbray, or still later before the military 
authorities, who must at least have taken some cog- 
nizance of the disappearance of one who had been 
brought into a certain notoriety in the very fact of 
his release from the Sugar-House. So much is cer- 
tain, as that the oddly-minded officer fell into no dis- 
grace, as he is known to have retained his command 
and his popularity through the months following ; 
and the guess may be hazarded, that the daring 
voungster was believed to have adventured an escape 
in the darkness of that night, and been drowned,— 


33 ^ 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


or that the reputation and family connections of the 
colonel were sufficient to prevent any too close en- 
quiry into an event really of no more consequence 
to the royal cause in America. One other than him- 
self undoubtedly knew the truth and endorsed it — 
the true and loving wife who had shared with him 
in his discontent over the situation of the young 
captive, and who would only have been repeating 
some of the traditions of her own noble family, if 
she had herself “opened the prison-doors of the 
captive and let the oppressed go free.” 

So much of the instrument in this deliverance. 
But what of him delivered? — possibly delivered 
from the power of the British foe, but into that of 
the equinoctial storm, which might be the more 
deadly of the two enemies? This question can only 
be answered in a rapid and fragmentary tracing, with 
the more important result following. 

The boat in which Walter Hartshorne had left the 
dock and made his way out into the seething waters 
of the North River, was only a yawl of some fifteen 
feet in length, probably belonging to one of the war- 
vessels lying in the harbor — a sea-worthy and ser- 
viceable boat, for still water, but a mere cockleshell 
for the rough waves of the equinox, even in the Bay 
of New York, in such darkness as must prevent due 
sight of the coming of the more dangerous swells. 
It had two oars, of reasonable length, and the proper 
fittings of seats and row-locks, as the unexpected 
occupant rather felt than saw, as he passed beyond 
the short line of his deliverer’s vision. Colonel Mow- 
bray had believed the boat safe enough, in the 
hands of one accustomed to rowing, for making the 
passage across the Hudson to the Jersey shore op- 


A Waif on the Waters. 


• 337 


posite, even in a storm of such violence : the es- 
caping prisoner, in the tumult of agitation natural 
to such a movement, had believed so much and 
thought of nothing beyond. 

A moment or two, and he was safely out in the 
river, apparently undiscovered by any of the sentries 
who might have hailed a passing sound and sent a 
bullet dangerously near to him in the dark. That 
moment or two, also, put him, so to speak, in his 
seat, with the oars well in hand, and, in spite of his 
weakness, a feeling of being at home in the position. 
Only the most absolute guess-work, necessarily com- 
bined with some observation of the course of the 
storm, could direct him across the river, to whatever 
landing-place might chance, and with all the worst 
portion of the escape yet before him, in the long 
tramp by land, through the woods and in daylight 
hiding, around the Kills and the Lower Bay, to the 
Monmouth coast and the Highlands. Behind him, 
for crossing the river, there would be a light of some 
certainty — that from the houses of the city — dim, 
and hidden as to its special points, but visible as 
reflected upwards on th« low-hanging clouds. 

Manfully the young Jerseyman bent to his stroke, 
till he was well off the town and beyond the reach of 
challenge or the shot that might follow. Then he 
rested on his oars, for a moment, to think, his boat 
tumbling about warningly as he did so. Then he 
bent to his oars again, with the paletot thrown 'off 
from his shoulders and the storm beating on his 
body-clothing at its will. The reflected light of the 
city was now on his left, instead of behind him : he 
was rowing down the Upper Bay, for the Narrows 
or Staten Island ! Heading to the storm and the 

15 


338 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


swell, he felt the force of both wind and wave much 
more : but we have already understood that that 
counted for little with the habitue of the coast, ex- 
cept as it might exhaust his strength the sooner. 

It was evident that he had abandoned the idea of 
crossing to the Jersey shore — that he was at least 
determined to make Staten Island or some portion 
of the shore of the Great Kills, before abandoning 
his boat and before the coming of dangerous day- 
light. He rowed on, with steady stroke, in spite of 
the roughness of the water, and though the labor 
began to tell a little upon one at once weakened and 
out of practice. Once he came very near to wreck ; 
for something even blacker loomed up from the mid- 
night darkness, at the very moment when he was 
close upon it, and backing water with one oar while 
he pulled with the other,he swept by, almost grazing 
the side, the black hulk of one of the transports 
lying below the Battery and showing no light in the 
certainty of there being few vessels likely to foul 
her. 

On — rowing on, in the same direction, as indi- 
cated by the wind and the C(furse of the waves. For 
a time the water was very rough, and the little boat 
had nearly all that she could bear, in meeting the 
heavy rollers. Then the water smoothened, and 
he knew that he was under the shelter of Long 
Island. On — rowing on, with captivity behind and 
freedom and his mother ahead ! He grew weary — 
very weary, and felt sleep creeping over him. Then 
he ceased rowing, drew in his oars, and took advan- 
tage of the comparatively still water to rest himself 
by standing in the stern-sheets and sculling with 
a single blade. So on and on, with no thought 


A Waif on the Waters. 


339 


of desisting, though the labor told on his head as 
well as his body, and nothing less than the excite- 
ment of the half-achieved escape could have kept 
him steady at his effort. 

The storm held — even increased, at what he 
believed to be something past midnight. But the 
late moon rose at that juncture, and even pierced 
the thick storm-clouds with a certain amount of 
light. The shore showed dimly, and the waters were 
discernible. He went back to his oars, and so seated, 
surveyed the situation. The Narrows were within a 
mile — the Narrows, beyond which lay the Lower 
Bay, and across that bay the Highlands — home! 
The waves must be breaking terribly on those shoals 
of Romer, across which he had rowed with Tom 
Wayne (poor Tom ! — away in the dismal and deadly 
Whitby, and he deserting him, as he almost felt !) on 
that night, two-and-a-half months ago, which had 
resulted so fatally to both. And yet, as, once more 
at his oars, rested a trifle by the sculling and the lee 
of the Long Island shore, he pulled the little boat 
into the teeth of the waves that came rolling in from 
the Lower Bay to the Upper, Walter Hartshorne 
(surely he was mad!) determined that no landing 
should be made on Staten Island or on the south 
side of Long Island — that he would reach the New 
Jersey shore and the neighborhood of his own home, 
or die in the attempt ! 

There is nothing exhilarating in the history of great 
struggles that are painful beyond a certain degree. 
The hearer or the reader must sympathise with such 
a relation, with a sympathy that is really distressing, 
or the story goes for naught. And so, little more 
can be said of the bold, ay, rash, attempt of the 


340 


The Spur of Mo7imonth. * 


young adventurer, to cross Raritan Bay, in an open 
boat of such small size, in the night, with only the 
doubtful glimmer of a storm-moon, and in the teeth 
of the equinox by no means spent. It was a rash 
deed, nay a mad deed ; but were there not risks of 
recapture in any other course? and were not his 
home and his mother at the end of the struggle, if he 
should have the good fortune to live through it ? 

Ay, there was the vital question involved. No 
one before, of a surety, and no one since, in any pro- 
bability, ever made that crossing under so perilous 
circumstances. Avoiding Romer so far as to take 
the course now known as the Swash, happily he 
escaped the full rake of the open sea, coming in from 
the point of Sandy Hook. But, as for that little 
boat, and for two exhausted boyish arms, what ter- 
rible billows really remained ! And how often, sink- 
ing down into the trough of the great waves, while 
the crests rose more than a score of feet above him, * 
even his stout young heart sank for the moment in 
the belief that he must be overwhelmed ; but to rise 
again when the plucky little cockle-shell once more 
rose defiantly ! How often absolute weariness, with 
the sleep which seems its only alleviation, overcame 
him to the very verge of his dropping the oars (ah, 
there was no rest of sculling, in that sea !), the re- 
vival coming just in time to prevent his dropping the 
oars out of his blistered and loosening hands, and 
thus being left at the miscalled mercy of the waves ! 
How often his mother’s name was in his thought, 
(not on his lips, for that would have been a waste of 
the breath that he could so ill spare !) blended with 
that of the Ruler of the Storm, who alone could shel- 
ter him in that long toil and extremity ! 


A Waif on the Waters. 


341 


Partial loss of consciousness can. lough 

not the total loss of mechanical po\ le oars 

moved when the brain controlling th ,..1 had no vo- 
lition as to how or why they moved. And that time 
— thank God! — did not arrive until its arrival was 
other than fatal. For some time the lee Sandy 
Hook had made the sea far less heavy and c }erous 
than when in the line of the Amboy Chan. . He 
was well in with the land, when the movem ht of 
the oars became entirely mechanical and the fingers 
grew ready to drop the blades they had held so long 
and well, And he was within the edge of the sedges 
of Ware Creek Meadows (a favorite resort of Huyler’s 
Men, at times), and nearly in the. mouth of the 
creek itself, when overtasked nature at last gave 
way so far as to cause one of the oars to slip from 
his hand, so that it rather slid than rolled overboard. 
By this accident it seemed that both brain and body 
' found a certain measure of revival ; for he was aware 
of the fact, as one knows something in dreamland or 
that farther confine of life, the land of fever. Me- 
chanically he reached over the side of the boat, to 
rescue what he dully felt that he could not spare ; 
and then and there his sight took in what the brain 
at first refused to recognize — what, when it did 
recognize, had the horrid unreality of the phantas- 
magoria blending with the petrifying power of the 
Gorgon.' 

There was a dead face looking up at him from the 
water, in the edge of the sedges, where it and the 
body to which it belonged had something of the 
same rocking and swaying motion, communicated by 
the water, that he dimly remembered seeing in the 
action of his own boat, some eventful hours before. 


342 


■The Spur of Monmouth. 


whe*' ,he mouldering pier from which he 

had assisted escape. It had been so near 

the oar, tiiu '**' seizing the one he must have touched 
the other. The open eyes glared at him, keen while 
glassy, and full of that peculiar horror which seems to 
belo ^ < the unclosed windows of life when there is 
no ’c emaining inside the temple. At first there 
Wc • Lely a dull recognition of the presence of 
der '■ ^^in the brain that had been so overwrought : 
the chat brain took in a new consciousness, if only 
for an instant, and the young fellow fell forward with 
a cry, his body partially out of the boat and one 
hantl gripping the clothing of the drowned object. 
But the shock unseated the small amount of remain- 
ing reason, with the last particle of strength ; and as 
he had fallen, so he remained, his hand still holding 
the -^ear though terrible object, and his form fortu- 
nately not so far beyond its balance as to topple him 
overboard or bring on sudden death from the ad- 
ditional rush of blood to the already-overheated 
head. Totally and stupidly unconscious — for all 
practical purposes, and without the intervention of 
seme assisting hand, dead as the drowned man float- 
ing without. 

It was then the gray of the morning. The storm 
was breaking; and William Marriner and a boat’s 
crew were coming out of the creek — not upon pa- 
triot service, it is to be feared, but intent upon reach- 
ing Sandy Hook and picking up any waifs that the 
storm might have scattered there. They saw, as 
they came out, a boat adrift in the edge of the sedges 
— they rowed for it, as for the first booty of their 
cruise. They found in it an unconscious but still 
living form, lying as already described, and holding 


A IV aif on the Waters, 


^3 


grip of the dead form without, while one oar had 
drifted away into the sedges, and the other, with' he 
paletot and cap of the rower, floated in more than 
a foot of water that immersed his feet and legs, in 
the bottom of the boat. The captain and some of 
the others had no difficulty in recognizing at c the 
nephew of the Patroon and their young comrai^j^ ‘he 
burning of the Staghound. Alas ! none of t. ad 
any trouble to recognize the Damon of that 1 , gj As 
grasp ; though many tokens showed at once thi ,ie 
drowning of the former had not been a thing o^ that 
morning — that, consequently, there had been no 
probability of the late fortunes of the two having any 
immediate connection. And what they did not know 
at that moment, there was little probability of learn- 
ing, at any early period, from the lips that alone could 
have informed them ; for the rough surgery of the 
men of the coast failed to break the chain of ins, nsi- 
bility, further than to elicit a few groans that told 
at once of life and dumb suffering. 

Perhaps never, in all their service, even when speed- 
ing to some of that booty which formed the special 
perquisite of Huyler’s Men in the opinion of Tory 
judges, had the crew of William Marriner’s whkie- 
boat rowed with fiercer speed and determination than 
when they bent to their oars that morning, bearing 
Walter Hartshorne up the outer mouth of the 
Shrewsbury to the residence of the Patroon. There 
was a hurried landing and pause of only a few mo- 
ments, at Skidmore's (later to be the scene of the 
hanging of Captain Joshua Huddy, the one most 
deadly and cruel revenge of the Tories of Mon- 
mouth), to put ashore, under charge, the drowned 
body scarcely less sacred to them than the living 


344 


The Spur Momnonth. 

one they had rescued. He of that body had been the 
admiration if not the envy of all ; he who was still 
living had other claims upon their admiration, while 
they were not likely soon*to do any more profitable 
day’s-work than was involved in the single hour or 
two of his carrying home. Truth to say, with some 
of them the stripling had been a pet and a favorite, 
before the capture ; and even those rough men re- 
cognized that there was a certain wild and chival- 
rous romance in the situation, so far as they could 
guess it — probably even moie in that remaining un- 
known. 

It is no part of the duty of this chronicle, to paint 
the reception of the more-than-half-insensible boy at 
the hands of the Patroon and in the arms of his 
doting mother, who for the moment apparently 
asked nothing more than this return of his living 
body, with his restoration something for which she 
could wait, having received the one chief blessing, — 
and something that the Master of life and death 
could not be so cruel as to deny. Ah, many a long 
day went by, before the mother who so tenderly re- 
ceived her dear truant, knew whether he was indeed 
to be spared to her, with his intellect unimpaired if 
even in bodily convalescence. Many a day, before 
the hero of that memorable imprisonment and parole, 
and the even-more-memorable night-crossing of the 
storm-lashed waters of the Raritan Bay in such a 
mere cockle-shell, could fully realize his restoration 
to life and liberty, and make plain by personal rela- 
tion what had up to that time remained mysterious 
and problematical in the whole adventure of his ab- 
sence. 

Alas ! when that period of full convalescence 


A Waif on the Waters. 


345 


came, there came with it a great grief, in a knowl- 
edge up to that time withheld, as it cannot be 
longer withheld from those who nearly one hundred 
years later follow the fortunes of the Men of the 
Revolution. 


15^ 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 


“ POOR tom’s a-cold ! ’* 

This is to be the saddest of chapters. If the heart 
of the reader does not agonize under the hurried 
relation, however unskilfully it may be made, the 
effect of it will be very different from that pro- 
duced by the same story told in other words, half a 
century ago, when as yet so many other scenes of 
sorrow and suffering had not intervened between the 
far and the late past of a nation. 

We have seen “ Daredevil Tom Wayne,” self- 
elected one of Huyler’s Men and proving himself one 
of the boldest of that body of marine avengers 
bearing the alternate name of marine freebooters. 
We have seen the broad acres on the Monmouth 
plains, that called him owner and waited for his 
coming home from coast service, only less sadly 
than mother and sister, and faithful Marc Antony, 
longed and hungered for the same return. We have 
seen him a participant in the attack on the Stag- 
houndy and a captive in the hands of the British — so 
falling captive because he would not desert the noble 
boy whom he felt in some sort committed to his 
hands and led by him into adventures that he would 
not have attempted under other guidance. We have 
learned that he did not have the fortune, such as 
that fortune was, to share chances and miseries with 
the men of the Sugar-House — that he was trans- 


“ Poor Tom's A^ColdP 


347 


ferred, within a day after his first incarceration, from 
his service as a sailor and the enmity of Cunning- 
ham, to what the latter believed would be worse than 
anything that himself could bestow, confinement on 
board the Whitby Prison-Ship. 

That Tom Wayne was rather glad than the reverse, 
of that quarrel with the Provost which had brought 
about this transfer, there is no doubt whatever. At 
odds and disgusted with this tyrant from the first 
moment of beholding him, he was not at all likely to 
believe that he could be worse situated, away from 
his immediate purview, than where his visits must 
be more frequent. Besides, and of much more con- 
sequence, there was that in Tom Wayne which only 
the men of the coast, or those who have studied 
them closely, can fully understand. Nothing less 
than an almost insane preference for the water over 
the land, as an element for action, could have brought 
him to the Raritan shore and the boats making it 
their rendezvous, even if patriotism called him away 
at all from his paternal acres. With this overween- 
ing love for river and sea, the prisoner was not likely 
to believe in his being so miserably situated, when 
afloat on anything of marine construction whatever, 
as when similarly confined on the land. He went, 
then, to his imprisonment on the Whitby, with only 
one regret for the change — that it would remove 
him from Walter Hartshorne and prevent his acting 
in any sort as the protector of that dearly-loved 
stripling and protege. 

It is only fair to the British authorities of that 
special time, to say that the want, disease and suffer- 
ing then endured on the Whitby, werQ literally nothing 
to what afterwards became the dreadful reality, when 


348 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

two or three years later the Jersey and her consorts 
held fully one thousand prisoners at a time, more 
than half the hours of the twenty-four under hatches, 
and every type of disease, as every form of indignity, 
the rule of that floating Inferm. This by comparison 
only, be it remembered : there are those who believe 
Purgatory a place of actual comfort, as seen over the 
blistering walls of the royal seat of torment. 

Of all men, too, Tom Wayne, the torture of physi- 
cal restraint out of the calculation, would have been 
among the happiest, or certainly the least miserable, 
of those confined on board the Whitby. 

“Your merry heart goes all the day, 

Your sad tires in a mile-a,” 

sings one of the minor drolls of Shakspeare ; and 
there is a true philosophy in the belief that good- 
humor and enjoyment can be laid up, as an actual 
stock-on-hand, something as coals or corn may be. 
We have already seen that he had the peculiar for- 
mation of body — neither the lean nor the adipose, 
capable of best enduring privation as well as fatigue 
— capable of making the most, so to speak, of a 
miserable meal or a thin jacket. He sang well and 
easily, and had the capacity of light amusements in 
full measure. His amiable temper was almost cer- 
tain to make him friends, where the average of 
others could only have found mere acquaintances. 
There was every reason to believe that, if the day of 
deliverance ever should come, and one inmate of the 
Whitby's hold remain alive to meet it, Tom Wayne 
would be likelier to hold that advantage than any 
other. 

Really, within a week after his coming, he was the 


Poor Tom's A-Cold." 


349 


most popular of the patriot-prisoners on boad, with 
his brother prisoners. He made their miserable food 
more endurable, with that seasoning which comes 
from within and supplies so many without additional 
outlay. He sang snatches of songs, when permitted 
(which was seldom longer than until heard and dis- 
covered). He showed some of the miserables new 
games with a laugh in them, that he had seen prac- 
tised among Huyler’s Men. He snapped his fingers 
at the situation and prophesied (a little too loudly) 
that “all this would not be for long!” Secondary 
consequence, he was within that same week a subject 
of corresponding dislike to the petty tyrants of the 
Whitby, for whom he made too much noise, himself, 
and excited too much in others, besides distributing 
as well as carrying personally an amount of cheer- 
fulness which seemed to make it literally of no use 
to punish by imprisonment, him or others ! 

Then followed, and not many weeks after his 
coming on board, punishment for “ infraction of the 
rules of the ship.” In its first form, this was de- 
privation of rations, which, as yet-unconquered Tom 
declared, was “rather a kindness than anything 
else, as the privilege of not eating decayed beef, 
mouldy bread, and rice and beans crawling with 
vermin, proved that he stood very high in the 
affections of his keepers ! ” And yet, there must have 
been an absolute pang of hunger as he spoke — 
the body, ill-fed for many days, missing even the ob- 
jectionable food when that is denied. The remons- 
trances of a high spirit, conjoined with pleadings on 
his behalf by others, wrought the effect that might 
have been expected — deadly hatred toward him on 
the part of those in command, with careful watch 


350 - The Spur of Monmouth. 

kept for any excuse to impose additional and degrad- 
ing punishment, and (as need scarcely be said) with 
no tendency to break down the spirits of the victim. 

Only the most healthy and vigorous of constitu- 
tions could have carried the prisoner through some 
of the trials that succeeded — confinement under decks, 
and in nauseous closets, followed by being lashed on 
the deck, with his insufficient outer coat removed, in 
the keen weather of February on the ice-bound East 
River. It may be too much to say that, in such ex- 
periences, his health did not suffer. No man knew 
that it did so, however. Though necessarily he be- 
came somewhat emaciated, the dark curls seemed to 
be as rebellious as of old, however unkempt and 
tangled, and the defiant eye appeared to have lost 
nothing of that courage which had given him the 
soubriquet of the “ Daredevil." 

All this was to culminate, as none could have fore- 
seen — as only those can quite understand who have 
carefully watched the progress of the marvelous 
which is also the inevitable and possibly the natural. 
One day, late in March, and when something more 
than two months seemed to have done little or noth- 
ing to break down the happily-defiant spirit of the 
scape-goat, — a new officer came into charge on the 
Whitby. Naturally he came with the most unfavor- 
able reports ringing in his ears, and the most special 
warnings for his guidance, against the “ worst rebel 
of the lot,” from his predecessor, thus released 
to other if not more congenial employment. The 
name of the new lieutenant was Lorton ; and the 
reputation which he carried with him was one highly 
honorable to his talent and efficiency, but creating 
doubt as to the modesty of bearing by which it was 


Poor Town's A-ColdP 


35 


likely to be accompanied. He was said to have 
“ come on board through the hawsehole,” in other 
words, climbed to the epaulettes from the rank of a 
warrant officer or even lower. A few days made him 
aware of the personality as well as the name of Tom 
Wayne, and of something more which only after-re- 
search put within the knowledge of others. Lieu- 
tenant Lorton, of that day, then some fifty years of 
age, had been a warrant-officer, more than twenty 
years before, on board one of the ships in the Royal 
Navy, during the service of Thomas Wayne, the 
elder, as a lieutenant. He had been treated with 
severity by that officer — how well deserved no one 
can say at this day, or could say even one hundred 
years ago. Deep in his heart there lingered a deadly 
hatred against the memory of the man who had 
shamed him ; and scarcely less deeply rankled re- 
venge against the son of that man, when the like- 
ness to his old enemy excited his suspicion, and 
subtle enquiry among those of the prisoners who 
knew the young patriot’s family established the fact 
that he held one of the “bad brood” in his literally 
irresponsible power. No word to the intended vic- 
tim, if at all, until the supreme moment of vicarious 
triumph. But then ! — 

The time for that revenge came, even sooner than 
the lieutenant could have hoped. Tom Wayne, in- 
capable of prudence, as of fear, broke some rule set 
for the government of the prisoners. The lieutenant 
ordered him to be triced to the jury-mast which was 
the nearest approach to a spar that the Whitby oould 
show, and flogged ! The white shoulders of the 
patriot were bared, in the sharp March wind, on the 
open deck of the Whitby, and the fearful and un- 


352 


The spur of Monmouth. 


earned punishment administered. What, to us who 
look on at such long distance, how he bore the agony 
and disgrace.^ — he could not have been “Daredevil 
Tom Wayne” without bearing at least the agony, 
with all the nerve of true manhood. For the other — 
let those who believe that the softer metals of human 
composition can never harden into steel, look to it ! 

Then came the crowning moment| of Lieutenant 
Lorton’s “ revenge ” against the father in the per- 
son of the son ! Tom Wayne had been unbound, 
after his fearful punishment, and his clothing had 
been replaced. The lieutenant, in the full pride of 
his position, thought the opportunity a good one to 
exhibit both his power and his yet-unappeased 
hatred. Standing there on the deck, he told his 
victim what he had known of Thomas Wayne, his 
father, how he had been wronged by him, how he 
hated him and his memory, and had wreaked upon 
his son that revenge which he had been debarred by 
his enemy leaving the service. As for the personal 
punishment, he would yet do that more thoroughly, 
at the first temptation, on the back of a “damned 
rebel.” 

Had Lieutenant Lorton used his eyes a little more 
carefully, at the same time when his tongue was 
thus proclaiming his own disgrace, his vital interests 
might have been better subserved. He did not see 
that something upon the face of Tom Wayne, at the 
injurious mention of his father, which his own 
agony had not been able to evoke. He saw nothing 
—understood nothing, except his own pitiful triumph, 
coming so late, and over a different person from the 
offender. 

Standing near the low bulwark of the Whitby, 


Poor Tom's A-Coldl 


353 


with his back to the river (then in strong flood 
though thickened with floating ice), and with his 
face to the victim of his brutality, — the lieutenant 
was really helpless against that which followed. 

Tom Wayne, agile as a fawn and strong as a lion, 
though undoubtedly a little weakened by privation 
and punishment, may yet have been, for the moment, 
in his fury, stronger than at any other crisis of his 
life. One spring, like that of a panther, placed him 
with his hand at the throat of his foe, where it gripped 
with little less than the clasp of a vyse. The im- 
petus of the same spring carried both the lieutenant 
and his assailant overboard, where they sank almost 
as they touched the water, literally without a sound 
from either, though there was no lack of cries from 
the deck. 

The single boat of the hulk was lowered, with the 
celerity possible under circumstances of fright and 
non-preparation. But of what avail ? No body rose 
to the surface, living or dead, within sight of those 
who had “witnessed punishment ” so truly and so 
fearfully. Nor, though the body of the lieutenant 
was afterwards recovered, was that of Tom Wayne 
seen again in or near the place where -he had re- 
gained his freedom after the manner of the old Romans 
who fell upon their swords, but with the addition of 
carrying his foe with him to death ! And no one 
saw that body, there is reason to believe, until it had 
accomplished its course down the rivers almost to 
the sea — pausing then as if to touch once more the 
land of its devotion, and meeting the half-insensible 
grasp of the young Patroon whom he had loved so 
dearly in life. So it was that he and Walter Harts- 
horne met, as the latter only knew after his recovery. 


354 


The Spur of Monmouth . . 


and when the brave and unfortunate young patriot 
slept with his father in the Tennant Churchyard — 
to be mourned deeply and long, but never more to 
be looked for on his return from the expeditions of 
Huyler’s Men, by his broken-hearted mother, or 
sweet Bessie Wayne, or the ever-faithful Marc An- 
tony, now indeed the “ head ob de family, sah ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXV. 


SUSAN ALLARDYCE AT HER WORST. 

“Are you dead, Sue Allardyce.? or have you only 
got a bad fit of the sulks?” This to the figure that 
was seated on 'the low lounge, with the head thrown 
so far forward and so buried in the hands that were 
outspread below it, as if they might have been the 
odd supports of a still odder caryatid. Then to her- 
self, though by no means so low as to prevent the 
possibility of the young girl hearing those supple- 
mentary remarks : “ Well, if I ain’t clean beat out 
by that girl, with one of her whims and another, then 
my name isn’t Hepzibah Thorn ! — so it isn’t! One 
thing after another : and when a body least expects 
it, too ! Only an hour ago, and peart as a blackbird ; 
now doubled all up there, as if she had two agues 
and a stroke of palsy! Whatever is it all about, this 
time? /can’t make it out, and I’m not going to 
try ! ” 

Miss Hepzibah threw herself somewhat viciously 
into a chair, caught up some light sewing that lay 
near her on the stand, and commenced jerking her 
needle through the material with the air of one seri- 
ously outraged and who meant to take satisfaction 
on steel and muslin. She only looked at the crouched 
figure in the chair, out of the corners of her eyes ; 
but in that way she did continue her observation. 
And after a time, so looking, she saw the head of 


356 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


Susan Allardyce, crowned with its glory of fair hair, 
sink even lower between the hands, until the owner 
might almost have been on the point of falling over 
on the floor. Then she saw the young girl suddenly 
throw back her head, sitting bolt upright in her seat, 
letting her hands fall into her lap, as if their full 
duty had been done, for the present, showing the 
speaking face all tortured into lines ot agony, and 
glittering with the traces of undried tears. And 
then she heard the strange love and torment of her 
life break out into a peal of hystericaf laughter that 
had no mirth in it, and that might have been, for all 
possession of that quality, the hooting of owls in a 
clump of trees overlooking a graveyard. 

Aunt Hepzy dropped her sewing and sprang to he,r 
feet. Something in that face, or that inharmonious 
laughter, and in the whole demeanor of the girl, half 
gave the impression that she had indeed lost the full 
balance of her reason. In an instant the spinster 
had crossed to her niece, all her late indignation 
merged into pity, and with one of the little hands 
held in her own substantial palm. 

“ Sue Allardyce ! ” she said, in a very different 
voice from that in which she had so lately spoken — 
“don’t mind what I said ! — you know I am an old 
fool! Only tell me what it is that ails you; and 
don't break my heart by making me think that 
you’ve taken leave of your seven senses I ” 

The reply to this was a second burst of hysterical 
laughter, akin to the other, but so much feebler as is 
the rumble of the thunder of the vanishing summer 
storm, than that which lately broke overhead in all 
its central fury. And then that supplemental laugh- 
ter ceased, and the spinster felt that the little hand 


Susan AUaj'dyce at Her Worst. 357 

was faintly returning the pressure other own. In an 
instant following she was on her knees beside the 
gusty little niece whom she feared little less than she 
loved, and the fair head had fallen over on her ma- 
tronly bosom, while the withered lips were kissing 
away what tears remained, from the eyes so troubled 
and sorrowful. 

“ You will tell your old aunt what ails you, won’t 
you, dear ? ” 

“ Yes, Aunt Hepzy, I will try to tell you. I meant 
to tell you, all the time, as soon as I could have out 
my little cry, in my own wa5^ and get to be myself 
again.” 

The voice was still sobbing and a trifle choked ; 
but Aunt Hepzy knew, now, what she had before 
only hoped — that the worst was indeed over, what- 
ever that worst might have been. 

“Yes, dear,” she said, “I knew you did: only I 
was so worried about you, and you know I can’t help 
being cross as a mad bull when I don’t have things 
my own way. Now — what ever is it, that has upset 
my little girl, again ? ” 

For ahswer, the first motion of Susan Allardyce 
was to push her aunt away, that motion being a pre- 
liminary necessity to getting up from the lounge. 
Aunt Hepzy submitted with the consciousness that 
some necessity was involved in the change of place. 
Susan crossed the room to an old secretary of ma- 
hogany with brazen nobs and handles, that bore the 
marks of an hundred years and English origin. While 
the aunt looked on with more curiosity than sur- 
prise, she unlocked the secretary, then unlocked an 
inner drawer, and took from it a small package 
wrapped in paper. This she brought back to Aunt 


358 The Spur of Monmouth. 

Hepzy, and put it into her hands, with such an air 
as if in this she had given her possession of the 
’nost important secret of the universe. The spinster 
took it, by this time a little open-eyed with wonder, 
and unrolled the paper. There lay revealed nothing 
that should have been sufficient to overturn human 
eq lanimity, much less to vary the -fate of nations or 
even of individuals ; and yet in precisely such a 
package, in the olden days, has often lain the witness 
of a; ^nuch misery as could well be crowded into a 
“’.apr event. Perhaps even in this day, when so 
. 1-^ii has been changed in customs, there may still 
be material in such trifling parcels, to make eyes 
flash scorn or cheeks pale with angry disappoint- 
ment. 

“ Why, Sue, it’s cake ! ” exclaimed the spinster, 
with the emphasis of intense surprise on the last 
\ .rd. But that last word was scarcely uttered, when 
r Tray shade of pain on the ageing face, told that 
Svy.nething more had revealed itself, at least in sus- 
picion. “Whose? — What? — It looks as if it might 
be — it can’t be weddin’-cake ! ” 

“ It is wedding-cake, and his ! He is married to 
that dough-faced thing he has been running after so 
long, like a fool that he is !” came somewhat rapidly 
from the lips of Susan Allardyce ; and it would not 
have been a difficult task to believe that something 
lik^ a hiss was coming from the sweet young lips, as 
they literally dashed out a portion of the words of 
torture. 

“His? Do you mean Lewis Forman’s, Sue?” 

Aunt Hepzibah Thorn well knew that that harm- 
less cube of cake, capable of evoking so much 
misery, could be none other than Lewis Forman’s ; 


Susan Allardyce at Her Worst. 359 

and yet she asked the question — more to gain time 
for thinking what else to say, it is possible, than for 
any other reason. 

• “Lewis Forman’s? Yes 1 Who else could I mean? 
Yes, his, if you will speak that hateful name that 
never ought to be mentioned outside of a horse- 
stable or a kitchen ! ” 

“ Oh, Sue ! ” There was a great grief in the tone 
of the elder woman, as she uttered those two .”ords ; 
and it is probable that the sound went deeptrQ(:nto 
the heart of the hearer, than either knew at t. q-gjj - 
stant. However, that which was to be, had no u ; 
power to restrain than to create itself ; and the lips 
of grief and wrath had their mission that must pre- 
cede any other of peace and Christian feeling. 

“ Oh, Sue ! ” a second time Aunt Hepzibah spoke, 
as no reply came to her first exclamation. “ Can you 
say that of Lewis Forman ? ” ‘ 

“Say that, aunt? Yes, — that, or anything tl' 
can show how I hate and despise him.. He is — 

“What, Sue? What is he?” There had been a 
long moment of pause, and in that pause the aunt 
threw in the pregnant question. 

“ He is a fool, if nothing else ! ” broke out the 
young lips, in reply. “And if I live I’ll be even 
with him. I will pay him for preferring that hun- 
dred and fifty pounds of baby-face to poor little me, 
who might have made something out of him : 5^es, if 
I die for it ! ” 

Action was needed now as well as speech ; and the 
enraged girl threw back the disheveled fair hair 
from her face, with a gesture full of contempt for 
anything that stood in her way, and made hasty 
strides up and down the room, with enough of pro- 


360 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


nounced force in the bringing down of her little 
heel to have crushed something not too weighty 
lying under it. Aunt Hepzy could think of- nothing 
to interpolate at such a moment, except to ask : 

“ How do you know that he is married, Sue ? How 
and when did this come?” 

“ It came an hour ago, while you were out. Tom 
Peters' boy brought it, on horseback. Oh, they 
could take any amount of trouble to insult 7ne, as 
they t;hought ! The handwriting on the outside 
wiapiper was hers : I was sure of it, it looked so 
de'hcate and babyish ! Faugh ! — I just burned that 
up, and only wish that I had done so with the whole 
package ! No, I don’t : I wanted that to show you, 
when I got in the humor ! A pretty set they are : 
that splendid bridegroom who is as big and as awk- 
ward as an elephant, and thinks the whole world was 
made for his high mightiness to strut about in ; and 
that lovely bride with a face big enough and fat 
enough to have been chopped out of a side of 
pork ! ” 

“ Tut ! tut ! how mistaken I have been ! ” calmly 
said Aunt Hepzy. (Nobody had ever heard her 
sneer ; else might there have been a suspicion of 
such a tendency at that moment.) “ I thought,” 
she added, “ that you respected Lewis Forman, and 
really considered his size rather in his favor than 
against him ; but one doesn't know ! ” 

''Some people don’t know anything!” sharply 
spoke the pretty young lips, as their owner, tired of 
manifesting the energy of her hatred by promenad- 
ing,^ flung herself back on the lounge with what 
would have been a crash if indulged in by a heavier 
body. “ What do / care, whether he is as big as a 


Susan Allardyce at Her Worst. 361 

church or as small as a quart-cup ! I only know that 
I hate him, and that my name isn’t Sue Allardyce if 
I do not make him feel what a fool he has been, be- 
fore a week has gone by ! ” 

“ Why, Sue, what would you do ?” 

“ What would I do ! The only thing that I can 
do ! That baby- faced Bessie Wayne shall not have 
him if I can not — ” 

“ Shame, Sue Allardyce ! Shame ! ” 

“Oh, yes, Aunt Hepzy; all very well for you to 
say ‘ shame,’ because you are not the one that suffers. 
You seem to forget that I am an Englishwoman, the 
daughter of a British officer, and that this rebel 
needs looking after.” 

“ Why, good Lord, Sue ! ” For the instant Miss 
Hepzibah Thorn succeeded in getting no further than 
that exclamation, her breath being literally taken 
away by this suggestion that the daughter of Captain 
John Allardyce intended to embroil herself with 
everything that was Whig in Freehold and all Mon- 
mouth, by entering actively into the campaign against 
the patriots, for the sake of punishing a recreant 
lover who indeed had never been anything of the 
sort in the true sense of the phrase. When the 
frightened breath came back again. Aunt Hepzy con- 
tinued, very impressively, even if the voice was a 
trifle hoarse : 

“Sue Allardyce, I have loved you as if you had 
been my own child. I love you, to-day, as well as I 
could have loved any child of my own, spite of your 
closing your heart against me, as I sometimes think, 
nigh on half the time. But I can’t and I won’t love 
anything wicked, if I have to tear out my heart to 
keep from doing it ; and if you set any one to raise 
16 


362 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


hand against Lewis Forman because he has married 
as he pleased, then you are no longer niece of mine, 
if I go out into the street and beg for a living.” 

Without another word Aunt Hepzibah turned 
away from the young girl and made for the door of 
the room. It was doubtful whether she saw the 
look of grief and pain that came over the face of her 
niece ; and it is quite certain that she did not see the 
hands that went suddenly up as if in imploration. 
She was at the door : she had opened it, passed out 
and closed it, without looking back, or heeding what 
was taking place behind her. And so she did not 
see Susan Allardyce, as the door closed, throw her- 
self at length again on the lounge, in a passion of 
grief combined with self-abasement, — or hear her 
moan out two sentences, so different in their char- 
acter, and yet that seemed to have some broken con- 
nection with each other : 

“ Sue Allardyce, you ought to be hanged, drawn 
and quartered : that is z\\ you are fit for ! ” 

And, as many another tortured soul has uttered, 
before and since the time of Mariana in the Moated 
Grange : 

“ Oh, I wish that I was dead ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

WORRY AND DUTY, FOR HEPZIBAH THORN. 

There was something more than a mere unde- 
fined suspicion, creeping through the brain of Miss 
Hepzibah Thorn, when she stalked, so stately and 
without looking behind her, from the room and the 
presence of Susan Allardyce. The good spinster 
had not lived to her years, and with the surroundings 
involved in her own troubles (already related long 
since) and the unquiet days of the Revolution, with- 
out laying aside something of the dangerous frank- 
ness which had once distinguished her, and acquir- 
ing more than her original power of combining cir- 
cumstances and drawing conclusions. Precisely 
what were her political principles, may have been 
doubtful : the influences about her early life, and at 
least a part of those remaining, would have been 
likely to make and keep her a loyalist, in her own 
quiet and undemonstrative way ; while the friendship 
of many of the patriot families, which she unques- 
tionably enjoyed, would have been quite as likely to 
smooth away any rancor against the patriot cause, if 
it did not win her entirely to that interest. Mean- 
while, there was not much doubt that the daughter 
of Captain John Allardyce, except in so far as she 
could have been influenced by her love for so ardent 
a patriot as Lewis Forman, had been, was and re- 
mained, a believer in the right of the King to retain 


364 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


his American possessions, whatever ill-blood might 
have grown out of the different modes of administer- 
ing their affairs. What she might have become, in 
the hands of that patriot, the bond holding her 
being one of loye, none could guess ; but it needed 
very little acuteness to believe that, such a mould- 
ing influence removed, and rancor taking the place 
of regard, the cause as well as the person of him 
whom she chose to consider a recreant lover, would 
be the subject of hatred and that revenge grow- 
ing out of it with the rank fertility of all ill 
weeds. 

That Lewis Forman was deeply involved in the 
perils as well as the councils and the duties of the 
patriot service, few in Monmouth were ignorant. 
The threat made on that night when his horses had 
so suddenly become cows, in the Wayne stable-yard, 
had been no idle one, few weeks as had gone by 
since its utterance. The most fearless of riders as 
well as the boldest of men, his “ light horse ” were 
already known in all the western portions of Mon- 
mouth (then covering much of the territory now 
embraced in no less than four or five important 
counties of the little State), for the celerity of their 
movements against the Tories, even though they 
were mere volunteers and holding no recognized 
position in the service of either New Jersey or the 
young Confederation. They were the Whig young 
men of the section, ready at any moment when their 
leader might call, gathering at signals that only 
themselves understood, and going back to their 
employments on the farm or in the shop of the 
workman, when there seemed nothing else demand- 
ing their immediate attention. Here one moment — 


\Vo7‘yy and Duty. 


365 


there the next — the next, nowhere that any one 
could trace — in a minor way “Forman’s Light 
Horse ” were locally little less celebrated as parti- 
zans, than the bold riders of Sumter or Marion amid 
the swamps of Carolina. 

In one sense, Forman and his horsemen had a 
duty to do, and did it lovingly — not a little like that 
of the “ Swamp Riders " of Carolina. Much of the 
western portion of the county was indeed swamp, as 
truly as any land lying along Santee ; and in that 
•mingled waste of wood and watery ooze some of the 
worst bands of predatory Tories made their haunt, 
alternating with the more declared robber-band of 
Fagan, the small “ Robert the Devil ” of the time and 
place, and who may be remembered as having fallen 
under the suspicion of Marc Antony as the perpetra- 
tor of that wittily-wicked “ stock-exchange ” already 
some time since recorded. 

Precisely how much of private feeling mingles, 
habitually, with what we believe to be public duty — 
who shall say ? There may have been more of it, 
even in Cincinnatus, thinking of the damage done to 
his ox-yoke in that memorable assault and defence, 
than he ever dreamed. Lewis Forman might have 
been much longer in assuming the accoutrements of 
the trooper, had he not personally felt the cost of al- 
lowing Fagan and his band to maintain unchecked 
the run of the Pines. At all events, very soon after 
the event named, he was in the saddle, with plenty of 
hardy riders at his back ; and then and thereafter 
Fagan (sometimes called, in the relations of the 
times, Fenton, though without due authority) then 
and thereafter, Fagan, the Pine Robber, and his 
band, had somewhat more difficult work to do,— in 


366 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


looking after their own safety, than they had pre- 
viously found in laying a*wholewide section under 
contribution^ 

Meanwhile, Fagan, if he had not many outside par- 
tizans in the detail of robbery, had no lack of them 
in sympathy with the loyalist cause in which he pre- 
tended to be engaged. There were plenty, as there 
have been in all civil wars staining the pages of his- 
tory, to condone the crimes of the robber in the 
service really or pretendedly rendered to the cause 
of the king. Correspondingly, Lewis Forman had 
more enemies than he knew — had more, by a very 
large proportion, from the day when he first entered 
upon the crusade against the outlaws. Bold to a 
fault, and not always among the keenest of men in 
reading the faces or guessing the covert actions of 
those around him, the young leader was little likely 
to know the whole truth of his environment, or to 
be ready for all the traps and pitfalls set by political 
enmity or personal hatred. 

We have already seen, in implication, that the 
young patriot, who was by no means steadily in the 
saddle or in his irregular command, had turned effec- 
tually aside from it, in at least one instance, to be- 
come the bridegroom of pretty Bessie Wayne. Well 
for him, if the flower of love was to be gathered 
within a long and weary period, that he should have 
so turned aside ; for the shadow of the death of poor 
Tom Wayne was looming in the near future, and 
the bridal roses of the loving sister could not well 
have bloomed upon the fresh sods of the brother’s 
grave. 

Meanwhile, that the society in which Susan Allar- 
dyce mingled, should have been thoroughly mixed as 


Worry and Duty. 


367 


to its political character, may well be understood 
from her special personality. The time had not yet 
come (though it was even then approaching, and after 
Monmouth Fight made its definite arrival), when 
Toryism in Jersey was quite put down as an outward 
expression. Many respectable and in other regards 
popular men still held the loyalist faith, even if they 
did not always give it free expression,— as the bal- 
ance yet wavered sufficiently to make the final event 
doubtful, and to render it uncertain whether George 
the King or George the rebel commander would at 
last prove to have been in the right, through the 
overwhelming argument of final success. Of that 
society no inconsiderable portion, as Miss Hepzibah 
Thorn well knew, was strongly loyalist in tendency ; 
and there was every reason to believe, on the part of 
the spinster, that her niece would be in communica- 
tion with it, whether in or out of sympathy with its 
objects. 

Like a blow, then, had struck the ear of Aunt 
Hepzibah, the threat of Susan that “ if she could not 
have Lewis Forman, Bessie Wayne should not” — 
that “ she was the daughter of a British officer, ” and 
“this rebel needed looking after.” What could such 
a threat mean, even in the madness of the girl’s 
jealousy, other than that she had means at hand for 
placing the man whom she had loved and now 
hated, in the power of the enemy? — that she would 
forget every other consideration to do so ? To the 
noble-hearted old maid, nothing could have been 
more abhorrent than this betrayal, if such a thing 
was really contemplated — except the possibility that 
one of her own blood and her own love could take 
part in arranging it. That was the drop overflowing 


368 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


the strangely-mingled cup of Hepzibah Thorn : for 
the time overflowing it more bitterly than the one 
desolating calamity of her life had done. 

What passed between the aunt and niece, during the 
night following, there is .no data for ascertaining ; 
though so much is sure — that there was no confi- 
dence interchanged between them. Frightened 
horror on the part of the one, and a feeling that she 
was severely judged on the part of the other, served 
to supply the material for temporary separation, of 
heart if not of persons. But the next morning saw 
Aunt Hepzy, with more of severity on her face than 
it often assumed, and with her scant skirts drawn 
much more closely and formally round her than was 
generally her habit, — out upon the main street of 
Freehold, and making calls in one and another di- 
rection, as if she had suddenly awoke to the pre- 
sence of a new resident in the village, and entered 
upon an active campaign of deferred gossip. Let 
the justice be done her, too, of saying that on that 
momentous morning she honored with hercompanjr, 
families on both sides of the line dividing Whig and 
Tory, and more than one over the doorsteps of which 
she would, in ordinary times, have hesitated long be- 
fore setting that foot once admired for its high instep 
and springy action. 

There was much more than might have met the eye 
of unsuspicion, in the information thus obtained by 
the conscientious female detective, working with the 
impulsive keenness of her sex, which only needs a 
motive, often, to shame the most persistent efforts 
of the opposite. That Lewis Forman had actually 
been married to Bessie Wayne, by Dominie Bent, 
on the evening before the coming of the fatal wed- 


Worry and Di.ty. 


369 


ding-cake — this she found to be well-known in the 
town, though the ceremony had been strictly pri- 
vate, and attended only by some half-dozen near re- 
latives. It needed more, and more subtle enquiries, 
to become aware that on the second night after the 
day then in progress, the character of the Wayne 
family for hospitality, in spite of the absence of Tom, 
was to be redeemed by a wedding-party, given at the 
same house in default of the traditional “ home-com- 
ing,” because the bonnie bride was really to make 
no change in her place of residence, Lewis Forman 
taking up his own abode at the farm-house, with the 
family left without a “ head ” except' the doubtful one 
of Marc Antony. 

So far, so well, in the estimation of Miss Hepzibah ; 
and so far certainly there had been nothing to repay 
her minute and unaccustomed enquiries. But pa- 
tience has its perfect work, at times, in other matters 
than those involving the spiritual state ; and little 
by little, from some of the Tory families, hints came 
to one whom they believed at least indifferent to the 
patriot cause, that Louis Forman, the rebel, who had 
lately brought himself into so much notoriety as a 
partisan, might find his ” wedding-pa“ty ” something 
to be long and not too pleasantly remembered. 
Nothing more than this — only hints with a certain 
spice of satisfaction in the utterance ; but to Hepzi- 
bah Thorn they revealed much more than the utter- 
ers knew, and filled the hearer with horror at the 
dearest creature of her own blood, who was un- 
doubtedly aware of the violence threatened, and 
who could conceal and even applaud it for the sake 
of that jealous and revengeful feeling to which she 
had no right wha^ver ! 

16* 


370 


The spur of Monmouth. 


The good spinster jumped to a conclusion with 
something more than her ordinary celerity — times 
and circumstances occasionally so sharpen all the 
faculties. There was a plot, at once against Lewis 
Forman, the Waynes, and the young patriots who 
might be expected to attend the “ wfedding-party.” 
At that festivity many of the most active of them 
might be expected to be gathered, unarmed because 
unsuspicious of any violence, and so a ready prey to 
any force disposed to fall suddenly upon them. And 
this Susan Allardyce, the child of her love, knew 
and could tolerate — could even boast of the black 
deed in advance, under the influence of her revenge- 
ful passions ! Shame upon a race so contaminated — 
even if she herself belonged to it ! So said Hepzi- 
bah Thorn ; and so saying she meant precisely what 
she uttered, and was prepared to act with a prompt- 
ness born of that troubled period. 

Not a word, as yet, other than the merest cour- 
tesies, between the aunt and niece, — though the for- 
mer could see that the storm of outward passion had 
passed entirely away with the latter; — that she was 
dry-eyed and with never a hysterical sob remaining 
in her voice. Not a word as yet ; and not a word 
should there be, resolved the spinster, until that was 
done which she felt it her duty to do — a task quite 
as painful as that of Lydia Darrah at Philadelphia, 
even if far less difiicult. Plots and plans, were 
there : violence, was there to be ! Disgrace was to 
be brought, was it.> — at least the disgrace of privity, 
and who could say whether it might not be that of 
origination } — upon the mad child whom she had so 
loved and fostered } Very well !— they should see what 
the Jersey woman might have to say, and what to do 


Worry and Duty, 


37 


in the matter ; and then let them end it as they would ! 

Very much to the gratification of Aunt Hepzy, she 
was freed from the company and consequently from 
the observation of her niece, at the very hour when 
she could most have wished for that deliverance. 
Susan Allardyce dressed herself for the outer air, at 
an hour past noon of that day, and left the house, 
without a word to indicate her destination. That she 
would be for some time absent, at one house and 
another in the village, was almost a matter of cer- 
tainty ; and well that it was so. Within half an hour 
after her departure. Miss Hepzibah again followed her 
— at least over the doorstep, though it seemed 
doubtful whether the phrase would be appropriate 
for much additional distance of their two courses. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 


SUSAN ALLARDYCE AT HER BEST. 

The appearance and the surroundings presented 
by and near the spinster, breaking out from the 
wood, some quarter of a mile distant, and approach- 
ing the house of the Waynes, about two hours later 
than the time indicated in the preceding chapter, — 
would have been phenomenal, not to say meteoric, 
at this day, even in the wildest portion of her State, 
though their parallel might, at that time, have been 
found, there and elsewhere, without any extended 
travel. She sat, bolt upright, in a chair of high 
straight back and antique construction, in a wagon 
that might have been ordinarily employed in ped- 
dling fish from the sea-shore — the vehicle, rattling, 
creaking and quite unseaworthy in a land sense, 
hired from a poor family in the outskirts of the vil- 
lage, drawn by a thin, aged horse of two or three 
miles the hour capacity, and driven by old Negro 
Will, who sat upon the miserable end-board and 
chirruped on his animal ; his pwn face so seamed 
with the age-marks of the African that it appeared 
to have been slashed and tattooed into irregular 
squares; his clothes a mass of patched remnants, 
and his white hair below the broken old felt hat 
giving the impression that he had a towel bound 
about his brows for headache. 

This conveyance was neither regal nor baronial, it 


Susan Allardyce at Her Best. 


373 


must be admitted ; and yet neither queen nor peeress 
ever held her chair of state more proudly than Miss 
Hepzibah Thorn on that occasion, going, with an 
ache at her heart, to do her duty The antique face 
was calmly set, as even marble might have been : 
the person who should at that juncture have tried 
to turn her back, or change her resolution, would 
have been much less usefully employed than in 
“ whistling against the wind.” And so she rolled up 
to the door of the Waynes — seen and recognized, 
some time before, as she slowly crossed the road- 
bordered field leading down from the wood to the 
house, and necessarily exciting some speculation in 
the family who saw that unexpected appearance. 

As most fitting, Mrs. Wayne, the nearest to the age 
of her visitor, went at once to meet her when the 
ramshackle vehicle stopped at the door, and had 
indeed saluted the spinster and was about to place a 
chair at the wagon-side to assist in the alighting, — 
when, casting her eye backward at the road and the 
wood beyond, Miss Hepzibah saw something that 
at once palsied her frame and aroused her into new 
activity. She came down out of the wagon with a 
spring, paying no attention to the chair, and availing 
herself little of the helping hand of Mrs. Wayne; and 
as she alighted she surprised the matron by exclaim- 
ing, very hurriedly: 

“ Good Lord ! What next, I wonder ! Mrs. Wayne, 
do let me get into the house and out of sight, just as 
quick as I can ! And you. Will,” (to the negro) “ drive 
round to the barn and put that old wagon and horse 
where nobody can see them — quicker than you ever 
did anything before in your miserable life ! ” 

Will drove away, with what speed he might ; though 


374 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


it is probable that he failed to get the horse and 
wagon into concealment under the shed of the stable- 
yard, rapidly enough to have kept them from the 
eyes of some marauder intent on the old Scottish 
stothrief. Mrs. Wayne, believing that her rare visitor 
must have found herself pursued by some armed 
freebooter, hurried her into the house and closed the 
door, with no other than the one natural inquiry and 
assurance : 

“ Who is it. Miss Hepzibah ? Though, for the mat- 
ter of that, whoever it is, you will be safe enough 
here.” 

This did not seem to be the opinion of Miss Thorn, 
however. Within the door, they were in the hall, or 
entry; but the hurried guest was evidently indis- 
posed to tarry even there for parley. 

“Who is it, Mrs. Wayne ? ” she echoed. “Didn’t 
you see ? Well, you will see in a moment. And what- 
ever could have sent her here, without she is a worse 
Delilah — yes, and a Jezebel — than any one 'd ha’ 
thought ! Do stick me awa5^ somewhere, quick ; for 
I wouldn’t have her CTiich me here, now, for anything 
in the world.” 

So adjured, Mrs. Wayne led her back towards the rear 
end of the long hall, and opened the door leading 
thence into the unused back-parlor, divided from 
the front room of similar name by another ordi- 
nary door, and thus not shut away from any sounds 
of more force than the lowest-toned conversation, 
uttered within the other. There, Mrs. Wayne would 
naturally have paused, again, to make the deferred 
enquiries ; but again she was not permitted. A loud 
exclamation of surprise, from the front room, in 
which was her daughter in company with a female 


Susan Allardyce at Her Best. 375 

friend, attracted her attention and drew her from the 
apartment, with a word of apology to Miss Hepzi- 
bah, a promise to return within a few moments, and 
an assurance that if she wished to remain concealed, 
no one without the house would be aware of her 
presence. 

“The jade!” muttered the spinster, thus left to 
herself. “ The wicked little thing ! — that ever I should 
have lived to call her so — I that loved her better 
than myself! What can it all mean, I wonder! It 
beats me, clean out. It would be bad enough, to 
know of what was to be done and say nothing about 
it to those who could prevent it ; but to come down 
here, pretending friendship, and maybe to spy out 
the land so as to make it all the worse and all 
the easier! — oh, fie, fie. Sue Allardyce! — I never 
would have thought it of you — never ! ” 

At this juncture. Miss Hepzibah paused, for the 
opening and shutting of doors gave evidence that 
the little figure which she had seen flying down the 
wood-lane on horseback and unattended, had reached 
the house and been received. And the truth must 
be told, that the lady, whether or not she had ever 
before played spy in her life, intended to do so at 
that moment and effectually. With her ear as close 
against the door between the two rooms, as was at 
all convenient, she held her breath and listened. 
And this, briefly sketched, is what she heard, as re- 
lated by her own lips in the days when 1778 had be- 
come a theme for patriotic narration. 

She heard the meeting of the young bride and Sue 
Allardyce, and thought that she could detect which 
of the two kisses interchanged must be that of her 
niece — so loud, and so surely of the Judas variety. 


376 


The spur of Monmouth. 


Then she knew that they had dropped upon a settee 
or two chairs very near together, and fortunately 
not far from “ her ” door, — and listened, as she 
might have done to some communication involving 
life and death, to the brief conversation that followed : 

“ So you are married, dear ! ” she heard Susan say, 
as vivaciously as if she was not about to betray the 
“ dear ” and all belonging to her. 

“Yes — we were married on Monday evening : pray 
do not be hurt because we did not invite anybody 
outside of the family ! ” she heard Bessie Wayne- 
Forman reply, and knew that Susan was looking at 
the bride with cruel directness, and that the bride 
was blushing. 

“Oh, never mind that — we had some cake, and 
thank you for remembering us ! ” she heard Susan 
rejoin, with the same exasperating placidity. 

Then silence for a moment, and then 

“ Where is your husband ? ” 

Miss Hepzibah could almost feel the hot flush that 
ran over the face and neck of the bride before she 
answered. 

“ My husband ! how queerly the word sounds, 
Susan ! I have not quite got used to it, yet. Oh, 
Lewis is away, I arn afraid for all day, over at his own 
place.” 

“ Humph ! I wanted to see him, and rode over es- 
pecially. All alone, too, for I did not wish too many 
to know that I was coming. Gone for all day, eh ? ” 

“Yes.” The tone not so cordial as that of the pre- 
ceding words had been. 

“ Do you know that I was very much in love with 
your husband, at , one time? — am so 5^et, for that 
matter ! ” 


Susan Allardyce at Her Best. 


377 


“ Oh, Susan ! — Miss Allardyce ! ” 

Miss Hepzibah, at that moment, had but one im- 
pulse — to try whether the door would open, and if 
so, to rush in and choke the' impudent scion of her 
own race. 

“ No — don’t change the name — I am Susan, not 
‘ Miss Allardyce.’ But as I was saying, I was very 
much in love with him, and should certainly have 
married him if he had asked me — as he did not.” 

“ Oh, Susan ! ” again from the bride. Miss Hepzi- 
bah was beginning to grow not only indignant, now, 
but impatient. 

“ He did better than to ask me, dear. You are so 
much handsomer, so much better, and — may I say 
it? — there is so much more of you than of poor 
little me ! ” 

At that juncture the affectionate aunt, had she 
been within reach, and entirely ignoring all humani- 
tarian and political considerations involved, would 
assuredly have boxed the saucy ears of her niece. 
The impulse was not diminished by the next words 
of Bessie Forman. 

“ I don’t think you like me, Susan; and I am sure 
you do not, or you would never say such dreadful 
words. As if Lewis wanted ta buy a wife by the 
pound ! ” 

“ If he did, he would not want the quality any the 
worse, or have it any the worse ! ” and the listener 
knew that the little lithe arms were suddenly and 
impulsively flung round the more substantial figure. 
“ Don't mistake me, dear,” she heard Susan say, so 
earnestly that no one could have believed her 
words to be jest. “ I am quite in earnest, and you 
must take what I am going to say for earnest, now. 


378 


The Spur of Mojtmouih. 


I did like Lewis Forman, very much, and thought 
that he liked me. But don’t suppose, dear, that he 
ever said one word of loving me. He never did. 
Don’t despise me, when I say that I cried a little, 
when I understood that he was in love with you! ” 

“ That you did. I’ll be witness ! ” was the unspoken 
testimony of Aunt Hepzy, the door between. 

“ If I shed a few tears — I’m sure there could not 
have been more than eight or ten — when I knew 
that you were really married, don’t blame me, dear, 
and don’t tell your husband, please ! ” 

Blame you ! ” and Aunt Hepzy was confident that 
in ;his instance the embracing was done by Bessie, 
while she grew more and more stupid with wonder 
a to what could possibly follow. 

‘ There, I have made a clean breast of it, so far as 
tiiat goes ! ” she heard the strange girl exclaim, and 
knew that at the same moment she had given a toss 
back to that rebellious glory of fair hair. “ I have 
told a young married woman that I have been in love 
with her husband, and I suppose made her an enemy 
or life. Who cares } I am Sue Allardyce — that 
means ‘ fool,’ more or less.” 

“ Fool } oh, no, Susan ! — my dear friend, and I 
hope the dear friend of my husband.” 

“You think so, Bessie Wayne — no, I mean 
Bessie Forman ? God bless you for not being jealous 
of me, as some meaner woman might have be^en ! His 
friend } you will think so, in a moment. Listen, for 
I have already been here too long; and* if Aunt 
Hepzy, who is a terrible old ninny about me, should 
know of my absence and where I had gone — well, 
never mind what might happen ! ” 

“A terrible old ninny, am I!” soliloquised th6 


Susan Allardyce at Her Best. 379 

aunt, behind the door. “ However, she said ‘ about 
her,’ and that is something.” 

“ Listen, and remember what I say. Believe that 
I know what I am talking about, without asking me 
how I know. You are to have your wedding party on 
Thursday night. Don’t start, but listen. I am not 
coming, so that the whole thing would not make 
much difference to me, if I didn’t happen to have a 
heart and a conscience. No — don’t invite me, for 
I am not coming ! You are sure that there is nobody 
within hearing.? All right, then. Don’t start, I tell 
you ! ” (In point of fact Bessie Forman had made -o 
motion to that eftect). “ The Tories have plan, ed 
to surround the house while you are in the midst of 
the party, and when all the young men are expected 
to be unarmed. The Pine Robbers, who so mu 
hate your husband, will be with them, without do\:bu,; 
and you know what is expected to follow.” 

“ I do know what is expected to follow, only too 
well ! ” answered the young wife, rising from her 
seat, without a sign of frightened agitation, but with 
every evidence of being deeply moved by gratitude 
“ God bless you, for a true and brave girl, Susan Al- 
lardyce ! ” she added, putting her arm around the 
lithe waist before her. “ What might not have hap- 
pened, if you had left us without warning ! Now, 
let us see who they will carry away to the pines, and 
how much they will make, altogether, out of Lewis 
Forman ! ” 

What more she might have added, or to what pitch 
the interview might have reached,* can only be 
guessed. It ended, there, as a tete a tete. Aunt Hepzy, 
thoroughly overcome, at once by surprise, love for 
the niece so suddenly rehabilitated in her highest 


380 


The spur of Monmouth. 


trust and favor, and shame that she should have been 
guilty of such a misjudgment — Aunt Hepzy tried 
the door between, found it unlocked, rushed in with 
the celerity which might have belonged to her at 
twenty, kissed Bessie Forman warmly if hurriedly, 
then flung her arms around the waist of Susan, cried 
more plentifully than either of the young women 
could manage to do, and spent the next half hour in 
explanations, apologies, and the reiterated declara- 
tion that “ she was ‘ an old ninny,’ as she had been 
called, and Susan only wanted wings to go up, right 
then and there ! ” 

“ What might not have happened, if you had left 
us without warning ! ” Bessie Forman had said. Ay, 
what of injury to the patriot cause in Monmouth, in 
addition to the ruin of domestic happiness, and the 
destruction of cherished lives, which most assuredly 
would have been wrought. As to what really hap- 
pened, with that warning — only a few words, though 
the night of the “ wedding-party at Wayne’s ” was 
long remembered, in all that section of the foughten 
Jersey Flanders. How the gathering took place, as 
if with no suspicion of the interruption that was to 
ensue. How the Tory force mustered silently, and 
surrounded the house, just when the bright lights 
through the closed curtains, and sound of dancing- 
music, indicated that the thoughtless revelry was at 
its height and all the participants defenceless. How 
the first alarm was met ‘with a volley from half a dozen 
windows, placing a score of the assailants Jiors du 
combat, in time'to meet the attack from without, of a 
body of Forman’s light-horse, in hiding and waiting 
for that moment. And how a disappointed and 
defeated body of marauders carried away those who 


Susan Allardyce at He7' Best, 


381 


had fallen — aware, at last, that mines may be met by 
counter-mines, with very destructive effect, if only 
the garrison are duly apprised of the danger, by a 
pate as giddy and a tongue as saucy as those of 
jealous but noble and true-hearted Susan Allardyce. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

FROM SPRING TO THE BATTLE-SUMMER. 

Even more briefly than in the chapter carrying on 
the reader from the winter of 1777-8 at Valley Forge 
to the events accompanying the “ melting of the 
snows ” in the early spring of the latter year, — must 
be indicated the change from that opening spring to 
the eventful summer following. A summer — let it 
be said once more — in which that blow was really 
struck, by the forcing out of Sir Henry Clinton from 
his central hold at Philadelphia and driving him 
across the Jerseys, never quite recovered from by the 
royal cause in America, though its closing misfor- 
tunes were yet to be long deferred. 

That centrality of position of the City of Penn, 
with the base of supplies which it afforded, had been, 
as even then well known, the principal motive which 
induced the efforts of the British to obtain possession 
of Philadelphia. And as against another and a less 
boldly-cautious opponent than Washington, the cal- 
culation might have been a correct one, and their 
dislodgment the work of a long period, if not an im- 
possibility. With Washington as the opponent, the 
occupation had scarcely been an advantage, from the 
first, — with the additional fact involved, that by the 
time the season opened the British army, thanks to 
such tutors in the luxury of winter-qufirters as Sir 
John Wrottesley and Captain Andre, was nearly as 


From Spring to the Battle-Summer. 583 


much demoralized as seemed possible for a force pre- 
viously under so fair discipline, to become within a 
period no more extended. As a base of supplies, 
Philadelphia had proved a disappointment, if not an 
absolute failure. Whatever advantages were held by 
the British in being within the city, the Americans 
held other and more important ones in remaining 
without, and so escaping any inconvenience of 
leaguer. The activity of the patriot forces, in spite 
of their ill-fed, ill-clothed and sickly condition, de- 
stroyed a large proportion of the supplies that might 
have been attainable ; a certain percentage was con- 
cealed or held back by the patriotic among the Penn- 
sylvania country-people ; and the threats denounced 
by the patriot commander against any who should be 
detected in victualling or otherwise aiding the royal 
army, went very far to complete the isolation of that 
body as well as the depletion of its commissariat. 
To some extent doubtful then, it has long since been 
demonstrated, that Whitemarsh and Valley Forge 
were not too near to Philadelphia, even after the re- 
verse of Germantown, and that Fabius was never 
more truly Fabius than among the wild hills of the 
Schuylkill. 

All this considered, however, the evacuation of 
Philadelphia in the first flush of the summer, and at 
a time when no effective force could have been 
brought against the continued occupation, was a sur- 
prise to the patriots ; and the strategic reasons which 
induced it have never been made entirely clear. 
How much a certain discouragement, incident to the 
arrival of the French treaty with the young nation, 
already mentioned, may have moved Sir Henry Clin- 
ton thus to inaugurate his new chief-command, must 


3^4 


The spur of Monmouth^ 


ever remain a matter of conjecture, especially when 
coupled with the expected appearance of additional 
French ships and fresh French troops, on the coast. 
There have been those who believed that the arrival 
at Philadelphia of the commissioners, Carlisle, Eden 
and Johnstone, before named, gave home-sanction to 
if it did not induce the evacuation ; while the fact 
that these gentlemen did not reach the city until the 
ninth of June, while the departure took place only 
nine days later, would seem to prove that it must 
have been contemplated if not decided upon, before 
their coming. Of what consequence, however, these 
speculations? — it is with the fact of the evacuation 
that we have principally to do, in this place, as virtu- 
ally concluding the connection of this chronicle with 
the fields of Pennsylvania, and hastily carrying over 
its few remaining incidents to the summer in New 
Jersey. 

A summer which was to be momentous in the his- 
tory of the struggle, in more than the flight of Clin- 
ton and the battle of Monmouth. A summer that 
was to see the fearful Massacre of Wyoming, at no 
farther distance of time than the 3d of July, laying 
one of the most beautiful of the Pennsylvania val- 
leys in blood, informing the tongue of relation and 
the heart of pity with some of the most painful inci- 
dents of savage butchery, and eventually inspiring a 
poem, in “Gertrude of Wyoming,” adding one of the 
brightest bays to the chaplet Of Campbell. A summer 
which was indeed to see, no later than the 25th of 
the same month, the arrival of Count d’Estaing with 
the French fleet on the Rhode Island coast, and the 
continued after-cooperation of the forces of Louis 
XVI., however unfortunate may have been the event 


From Spring to the Battle-Summer, 385 

of their earliest operations, with Sullivan at New- 
port. 

Briefly, whether the determination ot Sir Henry 
Clinton to evacuate Philadelphia had or had not 
been formed before the coming of the commissioners 
on the 9th of June, and the almost coincident report 
that the Count d’Estaing with the French fleet was 
on the point of entering the Delaware — that com- 
mander had certainly commenced arranging to this 
end on the loth day of that month. On the i8th — 
a day to be made one of the proudest and most mem- 
orable in British warlike annals, twenty-seven years 
later, in the battle of Waterloo, — the evacuation 
was accomplished and the city left to be the scene of 
Arnold's brief command and meteoric display, his 
marriage with Margaret Shippen (already foreshad- 
owed in the omens of the “ Mischianza ”), and his 
laying the foundation of treason in extravagance. 

Need it be said that Valley Forge was in motion, 
within an hour after the receipt of the news that the 
evacuation was an accomplished fact, from Philadel- 
phia } Indeed it had been materially alive for some 
days preceding, in the knowledge that such a step 
was in contemplation. All that comparative rest and 
additional discipline had been able to accomplish 
during that hard winter, in ameliorating the condi- 
tion of the little army, was required to manifest itself 
at once and energetically. If ragged uniforms did 
not show to better advantage under the eye of the 
commander-in-chief, when the muster was being 
made for what the soldiers rightly believed to be the 
“route,” — the forms beneath certainly bore them- 
selves more sturdily, in the prospect of active em- 
ployment, and possibly of pursuit ; and what eye. 


386 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


save that of the gravely-observant Washington, 
could have told how much that difference boded ? 
There were few invalids remaining, now, in the 
cheerless hospital on the Phoenixville road, though 
there might have been many better able to endure 
the tedium of the couch than the fatigue of the 
route or the skirrriish. Valley Forge, as a halting- 
place on the long and painful march to liberty, was 
to be thenceforth a place of the past; Valley Forge, 
as one of the sacred pilgrimages of the days of 
America’s glory and power, was just springing into 
being. 

The careful reader of some of the chapters preced- 
ing, will at least fancy that he holds less reason for 
wonder at the knowledge of the coming and just- 
perfected evacuation of the Quaker City, so quickly 
obtained by the patriots, than he would have pos- 
sessed without the perusal of those chapters. While 
the winter snow was lying on the Valley Hills, there 
had been a fountain of mysterious and very welcome 
information to Colonel George Vernon: might there 
not be every reason to expect a continued and cor- 
responding freedom of communication, through 
Captain Anstruther and fair Catharine Trafford.^ 

Within a very brief space, dropping the dry details 
of the historical and pursuing the careers of some of 
the leading personages of this story, at the time cov- 
ered by the British evacuation, this closing question 
will be only too well answered. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

NO BIRD IN LAST YEAR’S NEST. 

It was night again, on the Quaker residence of 
Ephraim Reed, at Cedar Grove, on the Schuylkill 
hills, — but a very different night from that in the 
dead of winter, during which it first came to view in 
this narration. The snows of that season had long 
since given way to the bareness of March, the young 
verdure of April, and the springing wild-flowers of 
May ; and now, in early June, waving grain had taken 
the place of the winter covering, on many of the 
fields of the prosperous farmer, to whom there 
seemed to be peace in the midst of war, and some- 
thing of gain if no marked advance in that direction, 
at a time when so many others were plunged into 
absolute ruin. The moonlight that lay broad on the 
surrounding country, could bring into view the 
plain house and humble outbuildings of the farm- 
stead ; but it had no power to lead the eye over the 
wooded and swelling hills sweeping away to the 
Schuylkill, and to show, as the daylight would have 
done, how fair a spot of the Quaker State it was, in 
the season of verdure, foliage and flowers, in which 
the thrifty host of Catharine Traftord made his 
abode, allowing the tide of conflict to roll on around 
him as it would. 

In the sharp January wind and over the trodden 
snows of that season, we saw a cloaked horseman 


388 


The Spur of Mo7imouth. 


making his way up the little lane leading from the 
travelled road to the house of the Quaker ; and in 
the sweet June air and soft June moonlight we have 
the privilege of seeing the same erect figure, again 
on horseback, pursuing the same route to the same 
goal. Colonel George Vernon was riding somewhat 
less rapidly, however, than on the night when he 
made his way to that first conference which resulted 
so differently from his expectations : perhaps there 
Vas less cause for haste, with the sweet summer 
breath fanning his cheek, than there had been when 
the keen winter air scourged it with stinging-nettles ; 
perhaps there was something in the uncalculated 
consequences which had resulted from that first visit 
to Cedar Grove, inviting reflection if not compelling 
it, and aiding the faint and distant sounds of the 
summer evening to induce an abstraction approach- 
ing to reverie. At all events, as he rode up the lane, 
even the moderate trot of the previous portion of 
the journey changed to a walk on the part of the 
able beast he rode, and the rider roused himself with 
something of a start when the horse stopped per- 
force at the closed gate. 

Though the summer evening seemed by no means 
to demand its protection from the air, the patriot 
officer was cloaked, even as we have seen him so 
many months earlier, though doubtless the material 
of his military wrapping was less thick and heavy 
than it had been in the former instances. As he 
alighted, the necessity for the cloak seemed to come 
to an end for the time ; for he threw it from his 
shoulders, revealing in the moonlight the simple 
blue-and-buff of his service, — and flung it across 
his saddle and the back of his horse, as he opened 


No Bird in Last Years Nest. 389 

the gate and led the animal through it and to the 
same shedding where shelter had been found on 
several previous occasions. There tethering the 
horse. Colonel Vernon passed out once more into 
the moonlight in the lane ; and it was noteworthy 
that even then he paused for quite a moment before 
approaching the house, marking the light from the 
windows of the living-room generally occupied by 
the Quaker and his wife, and the absence of another 
gleam from other windows higher up and in a differ- 
ent portion of the dwelling. 

Riding-whip in hand and the. silver light touching 
the rival silver of his spurs, the rider approached the 
door — closed, both the lower and upper halves, as 
it might not have been with many households, in the 
soft June weather, with the moonlight brightness 
without. Even there, again, he paused an instant 
before lifting the knocker, as if all the operations of 
the evening involved something to which he was 
averse and that was only done with an effort. Then 
he made that effort, whatever it was, throwing back 
his head and straightening his tall form as he did so ; 
and the next instant, if no sound of foot had been 
heard on the flooring of the piazza, the quick clang 
of the knocker rang through the silent house. 

A moment of quiet following the clang, as if some 
one had taken that time to wonder as to the person- 
ality of the summoner ; and next the slippered feet 
of the master of the mansion were heard as he came 
forward to open. The door had been bolted within, 
early as was the hour — no rare precaution in time 
of war ; and something in the clang of the bolt as it 
shot back seemed to jar upon the nerves of the offi- 
cer, almost with the impression of a blow upon the 


390 The Spur of Monmouth. 

heart. It opened ; and as the visitor caught the first 
glance within, that thought came to him which forces 
itself upon many of us, much oftener than we are 
aware — that there has been a mistake in supposed 
lapse of time — that some event really of the past is 
of the present. For Ephraim Reed stood within the 
door, precisely as he had done five months before — 
as he had done on other close-following occasions 
when the knocker rang beneath the same hand ; the 
book which he had dropped upon the stand might 
have been the same that he had laid down in Janu- 
ary, at the first coming of the Continental officer*, 
while Hannah Reed, sitting on the other side of the 
stand and plyingthose knitting-needles which seemed 
a part of her physical self, might have been finishing 
that very stocking then only well begun. 

A moment of silence, following the recognition by 
the Quaker of his visitor; and then he was the first 
to break it. 

“Thee is welcome, friend,” he said, carefully as 
ever leaving off the military appellation long since 
learned. 

“ You are very kind, to say so, friend Reed,” was 
the reply of Colonel Vernon, who had added some- 
thing to his form of address since his first coming. 

“Thee had better come in, even if thee doesn’t 
find what thee is looking for,” continued the Quaker, 
throwing wide the lower half of the door, that had 
before continued closed. Then, even as he spoke, 
the officer understood what had been the meaning 
of that blow on the heart communicated a moment 
earlier by the knocker. That had come, a few hours 
before its time, for which he had looked as we all 
look for the dreaded inevitable ; and he grudged, as 


No Bird in Last Years Nest. 


391 


was only natural, even the short abridgement of his 
soul-life, which seemed a little like narrowing by 
one day the mere point of time on earth accorded to 
the condemned criminal. 

The Continental officer stepped within the apart- 
ment, however, courteously taking off his hat as he 
passed the threshold, to the pleasant-faced and 
sweet-voiced Quakeress, who saluted him, without 
rising or laying aside the ever-busy needles of her 
knitting, with the simple : “ I bid thee good evening, 
friend Vernon.” Both she and her husband mo- 
tioned at the same moment to a chair, which stood 
very near ; but the visitor waved it away with a 
simple gesture and remaining standing. Moved by 
an intensifying of the same impulse which has 
already been designated, he could not sit, in that 
house and at that moment — could not have done 
so, had his life depended upon the effort. 

Again the Quaker was the first to speak : 

“ Thee is very welcome, if thee will sit,” he said, 
again indicating the refused chair. “ Nevertheless, 
thee and thy companions, the men of war, may have 
great occasion for much speed ; and we have no right 
to hinder thee. If thee will not sit, what is thy will ? ” 

“Mistress Catharine Trafford ? ” this was a ques- 
tion, not an answer to that just asked by the Quaker, 
but it served the purpose of both. Hannah Reed, 
as if judging that there might be something less re- 
pellant in the information as conve3^ed by her woman- 
ly lips than when coming in the cold and precise 
tones of her husband, said : 

“ Thee does not know, then, friend, as we hoped 
that mayhap thee did } Mistress Trafford is with us 
no longer.” 


392 


The Spur of Momnotith. 


i “ Gone ? and where ? ” The two questions, half 
exclamation, broke from the lips of the officer, more 
after the manner of interjections than inquiries. But 
immediately after, controlling himself, with a slight 
flush on the face at having been betrayed into an ex- 
clamation of feeling in that presence, he added : 
“ Pray pardon my seeming very much surprised, as — 
as there were matters of importance that needed to be 
conferred upon with Mistress Traffbrd. May I intrude 
on your time so far as to ask when she went away, 
and if any word was left by which she may be sought 
and that information still obtained?” 

“We know nothmg of the strange woman, from 
the time that she passed the door-step of our dwell- 
ing,” answered Ephrairh Reed, himself still standing, 
and with the air of one who should add the statement 
that he wished to know as little as he knew. A cold, 
pained shadow fell over the face of the officer, at the 
thought that the very trail had thus vanished with 
the object of pursuit ; but he rallied to say again : 

“Ah, is it so, indeed ! But I did not quite under- 
stand when it was that Mistress Traffbrd went 
away.” 

Ephraim Reed had not said so much, at all, being 
very chary of words on certain subjects and when 
compelled by certain influences. But, thus reminded, 
he took the trouble necessary to impart that delayed 
information. 

“ I said, friend, that we knew nothing of the 
strange woman, who has been very strange to tis, 
since she passed the door-step of this dwelling. But 
it may be fit for thee to know that she went hence 
two nights since, in a manner most strange if not 
most unmaidenly.” 


No Bird in Last Years Nest, 


393 


“Ah ! ” And the exclamation came from the lips 
of the Continental officer with a suggestion of pain 
mingled with and overmastering surprise. For the 
first time, then, Hannah Reed paused in her knitting, 

— and for the first time since Colonel George Ver- 
non had known her, gave evidence that she was 
other than the mere mechanical half of the marital 
union bearing the name of Ephraim and Hannah. 

“ Ephraim ! " she said, “ if thee has no objection, I 
will tell the man of war all that I can of what he de- 
sires to know.” Ephraim Reed, then, without again 
inviting his guest to do likewise, seating himself and 
giving signs of returning to the reading of his book 

— the Quakeress assumed that she had tacit permis- 
sion to continue, and did so, in a voice gentle enough 
to have half-broken the blow of the heaviest grief it 
was compelled to communicate. 

“We but know so much, friend Vernon,” she said, 
“of the departure of the young woman, who was cer- 
tainly very strange in some of her actions, and doubly 
so in this, — but who was always to me, though my 
husband did not ever think with me in the matter, 
most lovely in person and most truly after the man- 
ner of one who is called ‘lady’ by the world’s 
people.” 

At this point an expression of sincere pleasure 
and of gratitude to the speaker, swept over the face 
of the hearer, counterbalanced, so to speak, by a sud- 
den elevation of the end of the nose of Ephraim 
Reed, making it doubtful whether he had as yet paid 
much attention to his book. Noticing neither of 
those expressions, the Quakeress went on, in the 
same calm, sweet voice : 

“At the hour of sleep, two nights since — that was 
17* 


394 


The spur of Monmouth. • 


second-night, thee will remember — Mistress Traf- 
ford, as thee calls her, went to her chamber, without 
any word to us, to signify the intention of taking her 
departure from this house. Nor did we hear, during 
the night, any sounds to betray the coming of any 
persons of violence, who might have compelled her 
to accompany them. Nevertheless, on third-day 
morning, she not descending to breakfast, even at 
a very late hour, I sought her apartment and found 
her departed, without, as would appear, any intention 
of returning to the shelter of this roof. For every- 
thing was gone from the sleeping-chamber which had 
belonged to her, as search made evident — ay, so 
many articles that her own unassisted strength could 
not have removed them ; and on the secretary lay 
certain pieces of gold, counted out as if exactly to 
pay to us the charges remaining against her for her 
shelter and sustenance — with other’ pieces, few in 
number and lying separate, which might have been 
intended to make payment for a certain time in ad- 
vance, as if our due for the lack of notice of her de- 
parture.” 

Colonel George Vernon, still standing, had listened 
with such absorbed attention that before the cJonclu- 
sion his usually erect form was bending not a little 
forward ; while Ephraim Reed had kept his eyes be- 
hind his book if not fixing his regards closely upon 
it. As the Quakeress paused, the Continental officer, 
his face bearing the shadow of a great trouble and 
anxiety, said : 

“ Indeed, Madame, you surprise me, as well as 
cause me much alarm in behalf of one whom I respect 
so deeply. And you know nothing more, you will 
forgive me if I ask — nothing of any movement, or of 


No Bird in Last Year's Nest. 395 

any persons lurking in the neighborhood, who could 
have been connected with this so strange depart- 
ure ? ” 

“ So much I am not privileged to say, friend Ver- 
non,” replied the Quakeress, with something very 
like momentary excited - interest on her calm face. 
“Jacob, our serving-man, did tell me, on third-day, 
of seeing some of the red men, who must have come 
from a long distance, among the hills, as he brought 
up the cattle late on the evening of second-day, 
though they molested him not nor held any speech 
with him, doubtless as knowing him to be of our faith 
and household.” 

Ephraim Reed at last looked away from his book, 
as hearing something before untold to him, or some- 
thing from which he at that moment drew new 
deductions. Colonel George Vernon’s face was un- 
mistakeably lightened from its late gloom, though 
there was none present with enough of skill to in- 
terpret the expression. 

“ I will not say that you add to my alarm, Madame,” 
he said. “ But you certainly give me cause for very 
strange suspicions. I thank you, meanwhile, very 
much, for the explanation that you have been so 
kind as to give ; and as I have perhaps encroached 
on your hour of retiring to rest, I will take my 
leave.” 

“ For yet a moment, do not depart,” spoke Han- 
nah Reed, taking up the small bag which held her 
yarns and other knitting-materials, and commencing 
to fumble in it as if in search of some object ; while 
the face of Ephraim, now seen plainly from behind 
his book, declared that here, at last, was .that fore- 
shadowed of which he had before been ignorant. 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


396 

Not long were the pliant old fingers thus employed, 
before they drew out from among the balls of woolen 
a mere scrap of paper, torn and by no means cleanly- 
looking, while bearing but few words, and yet capa- 
ble of producing an effect not often induced by pages 
of carefully-scrolled vellum. A great hope, half- 
anxiety, illuminated the noble face of the Continental 
officer, as the Quaker craned a little forward from 
his chair in assured wonder, and the Quakeress held 
forth this mere scrap to the one so evidently inter- 
ested in what it might bear of intelligence or indica- 
tion. 

“This lay behind a chair in the chamber of Mis- 
tress Trafford, and may have been dropped without 
intention,” said the Quakeress, as she handed the 
trifle — ah ! not a trifle to him who took it, or the 
insignificant thing that it might have been to almost 
any other receiver. It had certainly fallen by acci- 
dent, as no one would have left it behind, and so 
mutilated, by intention. And yet whole pages could 
not have told more, to the eye properly instructed. 
It had been originally some three inches in depth, 
whatever the length ; and what remained was, for- 
tunately, about two inches of the right hand end, 
with the top much broader than the bottom. At the 
top could be deciphered “ n of Flowers,” with the 
date of the year “ 1788” plainly legible immediately 
below it; and at the bottom the end of a bolder line 
than the scrawled and undecipherable remains of the 
body, contained simply the four letters ; “ shwa.” 
That was all, and yet enough : how little is sometimes 
enough, when the surrounding circumstances favor 
the communication of much by little ! 

For one moment Colonel Vernon gazed upon the 


No Bird m Last Years Nest. 


397 


fragmentary but pregnant trifle — but only for that 
one moment. For in the light accorded to him alone 
of the three present, a story was clearly enough indi- 
cated to be easily pieced together. He saw the mode 
of departure, as well as the reason which had induced 
it ; and, whatever the personal sorrow involved, 
there was a great content in the knowledge. “ Thank 
God ! ” he could not avoid uttering fervently, aloud, 
apologizing the next instant to both his auditors for 
this departure from the habit of ordinary speech 
enjoined by their calm-speaking faith. Then he 
added : “ May I have the privilege of retaining this 
scrap, Madame ? — as it may be of use to me and can 
scarcely be so to you ? ” The permission accorded, 
more by a nod from the Quakeress than the mere 
word of surprised assent which fell from her lips, he 
thrust it into one of the pockets of his vest, and, 
with a bow to both the occupants of the room, turned 
to depart. Ephraim Reed, however, careful of at 
least a part of his duties as host, rose from his chair 
and accompanied him to the door, stiffly returning 
by a nod of the head and a “ Farewell, friend ! ” the 
bow and the “ Good night ” with which the Conti- 
nental officer for the last time at Cedar Grove 
assumed his cocked hat as he crossed the threshold. 

The door closed behind him ; and he stood for a 
brief space looking back at the house, and at a cer- 
tain window, now dark, though the moon made a 
white glimrber on the curtain. Then, bowing to the 
mansion as if he might have been bidding farewell 
to a friend, he crossed to the shedding where his 
horse was tethered, his head drooped much lower 
on his breast than was his habit of mind or body. 
Once, as he walked, he spoke aloud, and but a few 


398 


The Spur of Momnouth, 


words : “ Gone, and there! Well, it is best so.” Then 
he had reached the shedding. He untethered his 
horse, assumed his cloak, mounted and rode away 
in the moonlight still lying softly and sweetly on the 
Schuylkill hills as they sloped away to the beautiful 
river. More than once he sighed as he rode, and his 
head again drooped low on his breast. “ And what 
for. no as Lachlan McIntosh might have ex- 
claimed, if duly advised of all the circumstances. 
For the house at Cedar Grove was from that moment, 
to him, as empty as the nest from which the young 
birds have flown, or the cradle from which the child 
of love and hope has grown up or been buried out of 
sight. And the foot of Colonel George Vernon, 
chaplain and secretary to the Commander-in-chief, 
was never again to cross that threshold, over which 
it had passed so much oftener and with so much 
more of fierce energy in its spring, than the owner 
could once have believed. 


CHAPTER XL. 

nekaneshwa’s guest. 

Only two days later than the night on which 
Colonel George Vernon paid his last visit to Cedar 
Grove, a scene was presented in the wigwam of In- 
dian John, on the wooded plains of Monmouth, that 
might have conveyed even to an eye less instructed 
than that of the Continental Colonel, some idea of 
the purport of the torn paper which had so relieved 
the mind of that officer. It was afternoon, of a day 
which had been notably hot even for the first month 
of. summer, though relieved by the passing of a 
shower which had set the birds to renewed chirping 
in the oak woods, and hung tiny diamond drops on 
the ends of a thousand twigs and the edges of ten 
thousand leaves, for the time gemmed with the 
brightest of nature’s liquid diamonds. 

On the couch of skins, in that wigwam, which has 
before met the eye of the reader when occupied by 
Young Catamount, the Indian runner'just returned 
from his hurried errand beyond the Delaware, lay a 
figure as dissimilar to that of the Lenni-Lenape as 
was consistent with the possession of humanity by 
both, — and yet a figure like that of the savage, in so 
' far as that both conveyed in different degrees the 
perfection of physical grace. It was that of a woman ; 
and that woman was Catharine Trafford, scarcely the 
same as we saw her, five months earlier, beneath the 


400 The Spur of Momnouth. 

roof of Ephraim Reed. Changed materially, though 
how and in what particular the most, any observer 
would have been obliged to look more than a mo- 
ment to make sure. Certainly nothing had been or 
could be taken away from the very tall stature, pass- 
ing the ordinary height of women ; though the form 
was undeniably fuller, as if a second budding of the 
already-matured woman had taken place within that 
brief period. The eyes seemed larger and more 
nearly approaching to that wondrous sad beauty 
lying in those of the startled fawn ; the divine face 
was paler in the complexion of the rich waxen cheek 
and the always colorless brow ; and it was notable 
that while the form, as already said, had gathered 
new fullness, even evident in the mould of the exquis- 
ite large hand, that cheek had rather fallen away 
than filled correspondingly — as if either ill-health or 
overweening thought had worked in opposition to 
the other influences. Nothing had changed the mar- 
vellous hair of golden brown, however: that crown 
of glory, with some of the rays wandering loose over 
the pillow as she lay, stamped her, as it had ever 
done since the days of her girlhood, a queen among 
the women of many bloods and widely separated na- 
tions. Catharine Trafford, scarcely so beautiful, to 
the ordinary eye, as she had been in mid-winter 
among the Pennsylvania hills ; but to one thoroughly 
observant, by far lovelier than at the previous time, 
because more truly and sweetly developed in her 
womanhood. 

If this relation of the bygone time has a heroine 
(and what story, historical or romantic, is without 
one?), possibly that heroine is to be found in the 
mysterious cynosure of Charles Lee and the confi- 


Neka7ieshwa s Guest. 


401 


dant of Captain Anstruther. And it is the duty of 
the heroine, whatever chance, to be fitly dressed for 
the eye of observation. Yet the truth must be told, 
that the magnificent woman was at that moment 
clothed in habiliments travel-worn and soiled — all 
the more so from the darkness of their texture before 
the contact of the disfiguring dust. Few of her sex 
could have borne this test with impunity; when it is 
said that, could there have been a score of gazers on 
the occupant of the couch of skins at that moment, 
probably not one would have looked away from the 
face and head to observe the fitness or unfitness of 
the costume, the very highest compliment is be- 
stowed upon the rich and nameless grace of the re- 
clining woman. 

Beside the couch stood Indian John, who last 
passed before the eye of the reader on the winter 
day of his boon of protection, to poor little Running 
Brier, and his words of warning to Richard Foy. In 
most regards, the chief might merely have stepped 
from that picture to this ; though leggings of cloth 
had supplanted those of hide, and the rough woolen 
blanket had left his shoulders in recognition of the 
heat of June. He held in one hand his cocked-hat, 
with its edging of tarnished lace; and more than 
once, in the few moments of his remaining within 
view, he made additional acknowledgment of the 
heat of the summer atmosphere by using that head- 
covering as a fan. The same grave and noble face, 
with its hue so dark as to create the idea of a tropi- 
cal cross upon Indian blood ; the same abundant 
dark hair, with an un-Indian propensity to curl, and 
worn entirely after the fashion of the white, though 
without queueing; the same tall, stately figure, giv- 


402 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


ing at once the impression of great strength and 
equal endurance. A formidable figure, however a 
singular one, to meet in the rough encounter of the 
fight — if appearances went for anything; and yet, if 
the same appearances could be trusted, how far from 
frightful to the white woman stretched at length 
on the couch once occupied by the Young Cata- 
mount ! 

For the fine eyes of Catharine Trafford were look- 
ing up at him with as much of affectionate regard in 
them as those orbs could well have expressed in 
meeting the glance of a favored lover; and one of the 
marvellously perfect white hands that had laid hold 
on the heart-strings of Colonel George Vernon was 
held in the brown palm of the chief, with the very 
reverse of repulsion on the part of either. The eyes 
of Indian John, looking down, scarcely told the story 
of love and protection that was in them, even to the 
occupant of the couch, though there is. reason to 
believe that the story scarcely needed to be told over 
again, with former repetitions in memory. 

“Is the Bending -Willow refreshed and green once 
more, after the drought that has parched it and the 
wind that has swept so rudely through its branches t " 
was the inquiry of the chief, still retaining his posi- 
tion, though now evidently speaking for the first 
tim'e during the interview. 

“ The Bending Willow thanks Nekaneshwa, who is 
a great chief, but who takes much trouble with the 
poor squaw, that she can never repay him,” answered 
the occupant of the couch, for the moment adopting 
the figurative language of the inquiry, pressing the 
brown hand in hers, but the next instant returning 
to be the Englishwoman that she was, in the very 


NekaJieshwa's Guest. 


403 

different commencement of a reply. “ Yes, Sir Ed- 
mund — ” 

“ Hush ! ” at once spoke the chief, quickly and in 
evident earnest and some agitation. “ Who told you, 
overgrown child, to use that name, and here ! You 
do not remember the injury that might be done, to 
both, if anyone overheard it ; and we are merely in 
an Indian wigwam, with a score of cracks and cran- 
nies, instead of within stout stone walls with close- 
shut doors.” 

“ I beg your pardon, uncle ! — I did forget ! ” replied 
Catharine Trafford, thus unconsciously revealing a 
second secret within two minutes. 

“ Hush ! ” again said the chief, dropping the hand 
■ he held and stepping toward the door of the wigwam, 
only partially defended by one of the two curtains 
that had kept it closed during the winter weather. 
“ Hush ! We will make all that a little different, and 
then we may speak with less danger.” 

As he said the last words he passed out, giving a 
quick, sharp whistle as he reached the outer air. A 
moment of silence and listening, and then the whistle 
was repeated. A moment longer, and the magnificent 
deer-hound that has been seen keeping guard over 
the lodge while Indian John came home .with his 
basket-splints on the same eventful day already re- 
called to the memory of the reader, tore round the 
circle of poles and presented himself to his master, 
at a speed and in a haste of general manner showing 
that the whistle had surprised him when engaged 
in personal sylvan operations at some distance. 
Arrived in that .master’s presence, the noble brute' 
paused, with tongue a little out of mouth, but the eye 
bright and inquiring and the whole attitude that of 


404 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


one who should say, in aboriginal dog-language • 
“ You have called me, and I have come : if you do 
not want me, I will go back to my wood-chuck, who 
needs a trifle more of attention.” 

“ Good old Bruno ! ” was the reply of the master 
to this unspoken salutation — laying his hand on the 
broad head of the dog, as if that ceremonial of greet- 
ing was always in order. “ Bruno, old fellow ! lie 
down here — here, and let me know, in time, if any- 
one comes. Do you hear, sir.? ” 

Bruno did hear, and manifested that he heard. 
Replying as plainly to the order as he could have 
done in words, he nodded his head with a gesture of 
quite understanding what had been said and being 
always ready to do his duty, — then walked to the 
opposite side of the door from the spot where this 
conference had been held, and lay down at length 
but with head erect and all the signs of alertness on 
his speaking visage, in the particular spot on that 
side where the shade of one branch of the sycamore 
made the prqspect of an extended watch more pleas- 
ant. Indian John nodded approval of this movement 
of wisdom on the part of his four-footed servitor, said 
“ Remember ! ” and passed back into the wigwam. 

Catharine Trafford was sitting on the couch of 
skins when he re-entered, her loosened hair stream- 
ing much more plentifully down her shoulders, as 
she sat, and all the conditions already noted in her 
appearance made much more evident in the changed 
position. She made a movement to arise, as the 
chief re-entered ; but his words checked her and she 
remained seated. 

No, you are still weary, Catharine, from that long 
ride that I wish I could have spared you, but that 


Nekaneskwas Guest. 


405 


needed to be taken, and taken at once. You are 
rested enough, however, both to speak and to listen. 
So keep your place, like a good girl, while I make 
one for myself.” 

He did not assume a seat beside her, as the length 
of the couch would well have allowed. Evidently he 
still wished to look into her face as they conversed — 
something less easy with positions side by side. 
Chair or stool there was none, on the bare and hard- 
trodden floor of earth ; but a substitute for either 
was found at no great distance. One of the baskets 
of Indian John’s trade, of the variety having no 
handle, brought from the other side of the limited 
apartment, and turned upside-down, supplied a seat 
at least reasonably comfortable, and one very well 
suiting with the appearance of the odd aborigine who 
took it. Seated, and the hat thrown into the vacant 
space on the couch, he spoke again, and in a voice 
notably more free and cheerful than had been the few 
words previously uttered. 

“ Now you may say what you like, imprudent girl — 
though a very lovely one, by George you are, Catha- 
rine ! — and pliimp as a partridge ! By the way, what 
would not some of my tribe, of any other tribe, for that 
matter, give to have a hand in that splendid hair ! Eh ! 
You do not shudder? That is a brave girl and a wise 
one ; for the niece of Nekaneshwa, the Delaware, 
has no cause to fear the scalping-knife. What has 
all this to do, however, with what you wished to say 
and to hear ? Nothing ; but you must pardon me if 
I gabble a little, in plain English, for the taciturn In- 
dian has few opportunities.” 

” Say \V'hat you please, dear Sir Edmund — no, dear 
uncle,” was the reply of Catharine, again possessing 


4o6 The Spur of Monmouth, 

herself of the brown hand which so contrasted with 
her own. “Only tell me, when you are ready — ” 

“Why I sent for you? Certainly. The least of 
two reasons that I could give, ought to' be quite suf- 
ficient. I wished to have you near me, now that both 
the armies are on their way toward the seaboard. 
Sir Henry will not remain in Philadelphia a week 
longer ; and Washington will be on his track the 
very moment that he moves. He has already ordered 
the Jersey militia to hold themselves ready for haras- 
sing the march of your friends — 

“Oh, uncle ! ” was the somewhat singular interjec- 
tion of his hearer, at that crisis. 

“Well, of your enemies, then, if you prefer to have 
me use plain words. With the march eastward of 
the two armies, you have nothing more to do in 
Pennsylvania.” 

“Nothing more — no. Sir Edmund, as you say — 
nothing more to do there ! ” again came rather as an 
exclamation than a remark from the budding and 
lovely lips, but with something inexpressively mourn- 
ful in the intonatio'n, as if the words contained more 
than their bald meaning. If her hearer marked the 
peculiarity, he did not notice it, but continued ; — 

“ So much for the lesser reason : now for the one 
much more important and controlling. You are done 
with Pennsylvania, I with the' Jerseys and the Lenni- 
Lenape as well.” 

“ What ! ” — A third exclamation, and this one of 
intense surprise. 

“Ay, you may well be startled, Catharine ; and yet 
I am only speaking what 1 mean. Within a few days 
— how many I cannot tell, but a month would cer- 
tainly cover them — Nekaneshwa will abdicate the 


Nekaneshwa* s Guest. 


407 


throne of the Delawares, which may as well be that 
couch on which you are sitting, as any other seat 
that I know ; and the lodge and the council-fire will 
see him no more forever.” 

^ ” What has happened — will you tell me so much, 
uncle? What can have changed your feelings and 
intentions? — you who have been as firm as the rock 
and as severe as the north-wind, against any attempt 
to call you back to the life you had abandoned ! ” 

The beautiful woman looked him closely in the 
eyes as she spoke ; and the gaze, even in that doubt- 
ful light, would have been enough to set the pulses 
of most men tingling, when brought so. close and 
bent so directly. The chief saw and felt so much; 
and as he replied to her there was a slight shiver of 
wondering doubt, alike of the past and the future of 
one as odd as himself without the advantage of man- 
hood to bear through the eccentricity. Something 
more of this was to leaven the conversation between 
the two, at a little later period : for the nonce, there 
were other issues to be considered, and consequently 
other influences. 

“ By the time I have mentioned, or as soon there- 
after as that happens which is only a question of 
days, I am going back to England,” he said, very 
gravely and deliberately. 

“To England?” There was incredulity in the 
question. “You have found something!” There 
was more of assertion than of inquiry in the second 
expression ; and the arm of Indian John was grasped 
by those shapely white fingers, with such nervous 
energy that the tough flesh confessed the grip, be- 
neath the hunting-shirt. 

“ Ay, Catharine, to use your own words,” he replied. 


4o8 


The spur of Motiynouth. 


“I have ‘found something.’ Happy are those who 
are in no hurry, as they never know the torments of 
waiting. I, who once knew all the fierce and sudden 
energies of youth and hope, have been so schooled 
during long years of privation and restraint, that I 
can truly say, ‘ I can wait ! ” when something is longer 
in coming than I have wished or believed. ‘ Found 
something?’ — yes, Catharine, I have found all!” 

“ All ? All that you hoped for and needed ? I can 
scarce realize the whole in a moment ; but I can fer- 
vently say, for yourself and for the love I bear you — 
God be thanked, for this at last ! ” 

“Amen ! ” replied the dusky lips of the chief — the 
contrast between the word of Christian thankfulness 
and the brown hue and barbarian attire of the savage, 
being one that must have attracted attention from 
any spectator not absorbed in personal feeling. 

“ Amen, yet again ! ” echoed Catherine Trafibrd. 
“And yet — forgive the impatience of a woman old 
enough to have outgrown violent curiosity — you 
have told me nothing, uncle — Sir Edmund I ma}’- 
say, now, I know. Stop — you checked me not long 
ago : is it dangerous to speak more plainly, here ? 
Ifso — ” 

“With good old Bruno at the door — no ! ” an- 
swered Indian John. “Neither foot can tread, nor 
eye can peep, around this lodge at this moment, 
without my being instantly aware of it. No — have 
no fear. It is your right, Catharine, to know all, of 
that which has been and that which yet remains to 
be; for when I go to England — to-morrow, next 
week, next month — you must go with me.” 

“To England? I? No — no !” and to the intense 
surprise of him who looked upon her, the agitated 


Nekaneshwa s Guest. 409 

woman threw up those white hands to her face, cov- 
ered it with them as if in shame or hopeless grief, 
and remained for quite a moment without further 
word, though the breast heaved and the whole being 
betrayed the same agitation with the principal ges- 
ture. No word spoke the dusky chief of the Dela- 
wares, as he looked on and wondered : had he not 
spoken, only a few moments before, of the chasten- 
ing years and the calmness derived from them ? 
Then the struggle, however intense it might have 
been, passed away like the last quiverings of the 
physical earthquake which it indefinably resembled ; 
the white hands came down from the waxen face, 
the e3'^es showing the strained look of suppressed 
tears, and the lips set somewhat more firmly than 
any one had seen them since Charles Lee or perhaps 
Captain Anstruther. 

“Yes — you are right, and no doubt it is best, alto- 
gether,” she said, in a voice very low and suggesting 
the suppressed tears in its tone. “When you are 
ready to go to England, I will go with you, as you 
wish it. My work is done in America, as well as 
yours — ah, my God ! yes! And now tell me what I 
so much need to know, and what must be of so much 
consequence to yourself.” 

18 , 


CHAPTER XLI. 

THE PAST OF TRENHOLM AND TRAFFORD. 

The most objectionable form of composition is 
certainly explanation, as it is very generally the most 
unpleasant mode of employing the human voice in 
personal intercourse ; and yet it is sometimes neces- 
sary, if those alternate evils, wrong understanding 
or lack of any understanding whatever, are to be 
avoided. There was that in the circumstances of 
both Indian John and Catharine Trafford, at the 
period of the late conference in the wigwam of the 
former, demanding something more of explanation 
than their own words, so many things understood 
between them, would be likely to supply, even if 
caught with the unerring skill of the stenographer 
of a later day. 

Nekaneshwa, the strange Chief of the Delawares, 
has long since been exhibited to the eye of the reader, 
with such peculiarities in hair, feature and com- 
plexion, as might well have created the suspicion 
that he was other than an Indian by blood, whatever 
his life and action. And Catharine Trafford, but now, 
has been heard calling him “ Sir Edmund ” as well as 
“uncle,” leading to a very reasonable presumption 
that he belpnged not only to the white race, but to 
some noble family of that realm from which only 
such titles are of late centuries derived — that the 
complexion, the garb and the mode of life had been 


The Past of Trenholm and Trajford. 411 


assumed, through some misfortune or a correspond- 
ing eccentricity, like those which within the last 
half century led the founder of the Texan Republic 
and the hero of San Jacinto to assume and wear for 
many years the blanket of the savage. 

Such was indeed the case — never clearly known 
while Indian John inhabited his wigwam in the Mon- 
mouth woods, and exercised an authority among the 
Lenni-Lenape from the Hudson to the rival great 
river bearing the alternate name of the tribe, only 
second to that of some of the native sachems of 
an earlier century. Never clearly known, ancf yet 
suspected by no inconsiderable number of the more 
intelligent brought in contact with him, who could 
not avoid recognizing the fact that he was no true 
descendant of the aboriginal race. It can scarcely be 
possible that any number of the tribe acknowledging 
his singular and wayward authority, failed to discover 
his alien race, — keen as have always been, proverbi- 
ally, the instincts of the red man of the forest. Per- 
haps they knew, and honored him the more as being 
(so to speak) a convert to their habits and mode of 
life, while still holding that superior knowledge which 
seldom fails to make itself felt and respected among 
the rude and unlettered. All this is hypothetical : 
it seems only certain that during all that portion of 
his career spent in the Jersey woods, a great mystery 
hung over him, and that at the very moment when 
that forest-life was about to cease forever, a gleam of 
light fell upon the thitherto dark places of his history, 
afterward broadening to full knowledge in the minds 
of many who had known him as Indian John and 
Nekaneshwa. 

The man who should have been Sir Edmund Tren- 


412 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


holm, came to America either in 1772 or 1773 
precise date is uncertain), under circumstances as 
p'^-'liar as painful. By the death, at an advanced 
a^ of his father. Sir Walter, a baronet of Dorset- 
sf^ e, Edmund, his only son, would have succeeded 
to whe title and estates, but for the awkward bar of 
an alleged illegitimacy, the truth concerning which 
it had not been possible thoroughly to investigate 
during the life of the father. So much was and had 
long l^een known, as that Sir Walter Trenholm when 
in either married, in one of the coun- 

ts the south of Europe, or assumed toward her 
t. relations of a husband without the preliminary 
01 marriage, an English girl there resident, who bore 
him a son, allowed, after the early death of his 
mother and the subsequent marriage of the baronet 
to .ady of his own county, to call himself Edmund 
Trenholm. If such a first marriage had really taken 
place, there had been enough either in the life or 
death of the first wife, to induce concealment and 
silence on the part of Sir Walter ; and the death of 
the chaplain to the British embassy at one of the 
soutaern courts, who must have performed the cere- 
mony if it had ever really and legally taken place, 
had rendered inquiry in that direction useless, while 
Sir Walter rigidly adhered to his stubborn and cruel 
silence. Whether to his lawful or his natural son, 
the hand of the baronet had meanwhile been singu- 
larly open, an estate of value, supplying the revenue 
of a gentleman, being conveyed to Edmund by deed 
of gift, at an age on the part of the latter when the 
doubtful status of his birth had not yet sufficiently 
preyed upon him to induce him to refuse the am- 
biguous bounty, as might have been the case in riper 


413 


The Past of Trenholm and Trafford. 

but more sensitive years. During his minority, the 
son, when not at school or abroad, had resided with 
his father : after the deed of gift, he had remai 
when in England, principally upon his own esU ’j, 
the thought of his unsettled position slowly t 
surely growing upon him and inducing a certain mor- 
bid eccentricity which might easily become an incur- 
able disease in later life. There is reason to suspect 
that he would have indignantly thrown back the 
bounty of the estate on the hands of his fathe®> dur- 
ing any part of the later years of the baroi^^^^^ ut 
for the belief that he had only received a p."’^ 
what was virtually his own, and that he would .^y 
such a course of action only have made himself more 
helpless against that day of full justice which he 
determined to force if he should outlive Sir W. ’!er. 
It is scarcely needful to say that he was, throughout, 
confident of the marriage of his parents — of the 
honor, whatever the folly or unamiability, of his 
mother. 

The recognized marriage of Sir Walter, whether 
the first or second, had produced no son and Jmt a 
single daughter, married to Richard Wyndham Traf- 
ford, a Dorsetshire gentleman of moderate fortune 
but old lineage, — and deceased after bearing a daugh- 
ter and a son, already known in this chronicle as 
Catharine Trafford, so closely connected with the 
destinies of Colonel George Vernon and the more 
important events of the winter at Valley Forge, — 
and Captain Walter Trafford (whose hurried adoption 
of the alias of “Trenholm," to Washington, in a late 
instance, is thus readily explained). 

It must have been in 1771 or 1772 (again the pre- 
cise date is doubtful), that Sir Walter Trenholm died 


414 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

suddenly, from an apoplexy of which he had pos- 
sessed long warning, though at so advanced an age 
that his decease might have been expected at any 
moment. Within an hour alter the death of the 
baronet, Edmund Trenholm was advised of the occur- 
rence, through the rapid riding of a faithful old ser- 
vant who believed in the right of the old “ young 
master” to succeed him; and within two hours the 
unacknowledged heir was within the house of death, 
resolute to take order for the examination of a cer- 
tain strong-box, long kept in the baronet’s own sleep- 
ing-apartment, and believed to contain papers of the 
utmost consequence. Such an examination would 
certainly have been secured, in due time, but for one 
action of that fatal two hours. Profiting by the con- 
fusion following the demise of his master, one of the 
other servants, Richard Foy by name, had left the 
house and disappeared beyond the reach of any prac- 
ticable search, bearing with him, as believed, a most 
valuable portion of the papers contained in the 
strong-box, the opening of which was proved by the 
finding of the key in the lock. Neither there, nor 
in any other spot where their existence could be 
traced, remained any documents bearing on the le- 
gitimacy of Edmund Trenholm; and his long-cher- 
ished hope of justice and a place of honor among 
the aristocracy of his native land, faded and went 
out, as all believed, forever. 

As next heir, failing any proof of the only son’s 
legitimacy, a cousin of the deceased baronet, several 
times removed, became Sir Stephen Trenholm and 
entered upon possession of all the estates left in 
connection with the title. There were many who 
believed that the son had been,,deeply wronged, after 


415 


The Past of Trenhob7i and Trafford. 

the death of his father, as before. There were some 
who considered it probable that the fugitive, Foy, 
had been suborned by Stephen Trenholm, aware or 
suspicious of the existence of documents likely to 
defeat his heirship, to keep close watch for the mo- 
ment when such a step might be necessary, possess 
himself of the keys of the dying man, and make all 
speed away with those dangerous papers, if indeed 
any such existed. There were still others who re- 
membered an insane jealousy on the part of Foy, 
against Edmund Trenholm, in the belief that he had 
been unduly intimate with Sarah Buxton, a laundry- 
maid at Sir Walter’s, whom Foy afterward married, — 
and who believed the servant unscrupulous and cun- 
ning enough, having learned from servants’-hall gos- 
sip of the supposed existence of documents in the 
strong-box proving the son’s legitimacy, to have 
possessed himself of them and taken to flight, moved 
by revenge and some possible hope of disposing of 
them to advantage in the future. So much, and pos- 
sibly much more, as speculation : literally nothing 
was known ; as how could the truth be ascertained, 
under such circumstances? 

Within a few months following the death of his 
father and the failure of his honorable hopes, Ed- 
mund Trenholm, then a man far past middle age, 
alienated the property which had been to him only a 
mockery, and left England, as supposed, permanently. 
He had certainly grown to be a misanthrope ; and it 
is not too sure that he had escaped a certain taint of 
mental aberration. A year or two later, after many 
wanderings, saw him an inhabitant of the tents of 
the Lenni-Lenape, in the woods of New Jersey. Still 
a year later, he would appear to have grown, as In- 


41 6 The Spur of Momnouth. 

dian John, to be an authority in the tribe ; and at a 
period not long subsequent, on the death of Mich-i- 
co-lah, or the Bent Arrow, he conies into clearer 
view, wearing not only the garb but the intensified 
complexion of the red man, virtual sachem of the 
tribe of his adoption, with the sounding name of 
Nekaneshwa, John of the Delawares. 

At what time the self-imposed chief came in re- 
newed contact with Richard Foy, Sarah Buxton, now 
his wife, and poor little Esther, their only living 
child, is not entirely certain, from any proofs within 
either reach or memory. It seems probable that the 
removal of Foy with his family into the Monmouth 
section where Nekaneshwa made his ordinary abode, 
did not take place until some time after the breaking 
out of the war, perhaps in 1775 or 1776. When that 
removal really took place, no long time succeeded, 
before the disguised heir of Sir Walter became aware 
of his abode and identity ; and it is almost idle to 
say that thereafter the sad but keen eyes of the 
wronged man were ever on the alert for anything 
that could bring him nearer to success in the long 
quest of his life. That the invaluable papers had 
been brought a,way from England by the treacherous 
servant, hQ never doubted — it being quite certain 
that one of Foy’s character and tendencies, once 
committing the initial crime, would have preserved 
those documents for subsequent profitable or ma- 
licious use. Also needless to say that during the 
time of the renewed intercourse, the disguise of Ed- 
mund Trenholm proved effective, — no suspicion 
entering the mind of Foy or his miserable wife, that 
the powerful Indian who in summer hunted the 
woods and fished the streams, and who in winter 


The Past of Treyihohn a 7 td Tr afford. 417 

made baskets for sale to the farmers of the neighbor- 
ing plains, was really other than an Indian of odd 
appearance, who had lived much at some time among 
the whites and better learned their language than the 
average of his dusky race. 

It only remains, before permitting the parties more 
nearly involved to speak once again for themselves, 
to explain the coming to America of Catharine Traf- 
ford and her brother, and the very little ever really 
known of the position held by the former after that 
coming. They had become orphans, years before the 
breaking out of the war; and the patrimony left them 
had been materially diminished by the wayward reck- 
lessness and improvidence of the brother, for some 
years before holding a commission in the army. The 
regiment to which her' brother belonged, ordered 
into service in America, in 1776, Catharine Tralford 
accompanied the young man, not alone as holding 
over him the guard of an elder sister's love and care, 
but no doubt moved to the adventure of the troubled 
New World by something akin to his own wayward 
and wandering propensities. 

Here, with reference to the sister, any claim of 
explanation must cease, and conjecture only can take 
its place. There seems little doubt that her adven- 
turous disposition, denied full play by the impediments 
of her sex, at first followed as nearly as possible its 
chosen bent by aiding the royal cause in the procur- 
ing of secret intelligence in that interest, while 
Walter Tralford, then promoted to a captaincy, was 
fighting bravely, as became him, in the battles of his 
king. But quite as evidently there came a time when 
the interest of the sister in the cause of the mother 
country ceased co be real, and after which it was only 


41 8 The Spur of Momnouth. 

and skillfully simulated in actual aid of the patriots. 
So much has already been shown, far back in this 
chronicle; and even here not much more can be 
intelligently said. Doubtless the change took place, 
gradually if not at once, after the meeting and mutual 
discovery of each other by the once dearly loving 
uncle and niece, some time during I777» when the 
path of Catharine Trafford, then in Pennsylvania, 
was crossed by Nekaneshwa in one of those errands, 
with almost the importance of an embassy, which he 
was performing in the interest of the patriots and at 
the bidding of Washington. The tenderest of ties 
had existed between the two relatives, in England, 
and in the old days : it may not have been strange 
that the attachment to the patriot cause, born in the 
revengeful feelings of Edmund Trenholm, but nur- 
tured in close study of the country, its rights, its 
needs, — should have been caught by a member of 
his own family, whom he trusted, and who trusted 
him entirely. Meanwhile, even had they been thrown' 
into similar intercourse, with no bond of service 
standing between, the same agreement in political 
creed would not have been likely to arise between 
the uncle and Walter Trafford, who had never shared 
with his sister her belief In the legitimacy of their 
discredited relative. 

With thus much ot research into the occurrences 
of the past — not by any means so clear as the same 
explanation might have been made with reference to 
mere creatures of the imagination, — the conversa- 
tion following that already recorded, in the wigwam 
of Indian John, will be at least reasonably well un- 
derstood, in itself and in its bearing on the events 
closely and rapidly following. 


CHAPTER XLII. - 

INDIAN JOHN’S PLANS AND AGENTS. 

“ There is necessarily much that you wish to know,” 
said Indian John, taking up the conversation at that 
point where it was left at the close of a late preced- 
ing chapter — sitting on his corn-basket, by the side 
of the couch occupied by the weary Catharine, — 
“much that you wish to know, and that it is proper 
you should know, so faithful to me as you have been, 
my girl — God bless you ! — when others have be- 
trayed me or ‘ passed by on the other side.’ ” 

He again took the shapely white fingers in his own 
brown palm, as he spoke, and touched them to his 
lips with a stately yet loving fondness that was in- 
finitely touching. Catharine Trafford colored with 
pleasure at the motion, as the waxen cheek was wont 
to do at any act expressing warm affection, — and 
replied : . 

“ Do not thank me, though you may bless me, 
uncle, for having merely done my duty, and even 
that very poorly. Aijd do not be too hard upon 
poor Walter, or reckon him among those who have 
passed by on the other side, even if he has done so : 
you would break my heart if you reckoned him for 
an enemy, for he has scarcely had opportunity to 
know you and your claims as / do.” 

“ True, girl,” responded the chief. “ And yet, if he 
has not known the brother of his mother, he should 


420 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

have done so ; and thus his judgment suffers, in your 
plea, in the defence of his heart. However, let all 
that pass. To have even one relative who intelli- 
gently loves and trusts, is more than many ever know. 
There was much that I needed to tell you ; and there 
may be a signal from brave old Bruno at any moment, 
at this time of all times. I told you that we were 
going back to England. Mathematically, the greater 
contains the less. Before I go : ay, before many days 
have passed over the head of Indian John, what I 
most cared for in the world will be in my hands ! ” 

“ The papers ? You have discovered them ? ” asked 
his auditor, with keen interest, as he paused. Evi- 
dently she did not need to be twice told any tale 
appealing to her sympathies. 

“ I have discovered them — yes,” he replied. “ That 
is, I have learned where they are, and I know one 
who has read so much of the most important paper 
— the certificate of my mother’s marriage — as to be 
able to describe it sufficiently,” 

“Ah, how very, very glad I am, uncle ! How truly 
I congratulate you ! ” cried Catharine, with extreme 
heartiness in tone and manner. “Then justice will 
be done you at last, however long you have waited ; 
and I could not be better pleased, I think, if” — an 
instant of pause — “if I had within my own grasp 
what I most wish for in all the world. But — pardon 
the wo7na7i who is speaking now! — where are they, 
if you have not yourself seen them? — and what is 
the rest of this riddle ? ” 

“ I pardon the woman,” the chief replied, “ both 
because one always pardons the woman that one 
loves, and because I have that to tell you, to which 
your question leads. ‘ Where are they ? ’ — within less 


Indian yohns Plans and Agents. 421 

than half a mile from this spot, at this moment; 
though thus far out of my reach, until I put forth my 
hand and take them.” 

“ A riddle still, even with your explanation going 
on! — Uncle, and Sir Edmund, I am growing im- 
patient.” 

“ I must be brief, then, Catharine, for your impa- 
tience is majestic, like yourself. Those papers are ” 

— and he sank his voice very low and brought his 
lips very near to the ear of his hearer, as he went on 

— “in a tin box, rusty and battered, on the upper 
shelf of a closet in the best room of the house of 
Mr. Richard Foy, landed proprietor in a small way, 
hereabouts, from whom I have occasionally bought 
white-oaks for my basket-making, though I confess 
that I have something oftener taken them, in my 
Indian character, without that troublesome cere- 
mony.” 

“ Richard Foy! and here ! You never told me of 
this!” 

“ How could I have done so } One does not write 
such knowledge and send it by messenger, for fear of 
accident, or worse ; and when have I had that hand- 
some pink ear — minx, I can see its rounded beauty, 
gleaming out from your floating hair, like a pearly 
shell among seaweed ; and you had it from our 
family, noted for it for five hundred years ! When 
have I had that ear close enough, I ask, and long 
enough, to pour into it so much of what was not 
ready to be told ? ” 

“The true reason at last and following some other 
—as if you might be yourself a woman ! ” half laughed 
Catharine, silenced in a moment, however, as he 
proceeded. 


422 


The spur of Monmouth. 


“ Richard Foy, whether merely a scoundrel on his 
own account, or the tool of that better-dressed 
scoundrel, Sir Stephen — paugh ! the name has a bad 
taste in my mouth, and I must smoke the pipe of 
comfort if not of peace to cleanse it.” 

He rose from his basket-chair, the while his audi- 
tor literally writhed in impatience ; — crossed the 
lodge, took down a long-stemmed Indian pipe from 
a rude shelf showing his own rainy-day handiwork 
with the knife and a bit of cedar shingle ; filled it 
with some of the dried native tobacco-leaves that 
lay in a small heap beneath it; swiftly struck fire 
with a broken pebble, a bit of steel and handful of 
tinder; lit his pipe and returned to his seat before 
resuming. 

“ I was about to say that this precious Foy, whether 
his own scoundrel or the property of another who 
need not be twice named, — has done what many other 
villains have done before him — come into the very 
spot where both he and his rogueries were most in 
danger, and saved me years of search that might 
have worn me out. That he had the papers, I knew; 
but how and where hidden, I did not and could not 
know. But I have ploughed with his calf, if not with 

his heifer . Niece of mine, if I see another such 

smile on your face, by all that is sacred you shall 
never know the remainder of the story ! ” 

With this strange interruption of his own speech, 
Nekaneshwa was silent. Catharine TrafFord, over 
whose noble face there had really passed a smile of 
amijsement that, in view of a certain charge in the 
preceding chapter, the reader may not be slow to 
understand — laid her plump white fingers on his knee 
as he sat, and said, very earnestly : 


423 


Indian John's Plans and Agents. 

“ It was droll, uncle ; but upon my word as a gen- 
tlewoman I have never believed the story ; and pray 
pardon the first true smile in which I have indulged 
in many a long day. You know that I have been 
living among the Quakers, in the family of the 
Straight Pine, and that my opportunities have not 
been too many in that direction.” 

Thus reassured and possibly propitiated, the chief 
continued, his rolling smoke keeping company with 
l;iis falling words. 

“ I need not ask you, after what has passed, if you 
remember their child, poor little Esther. I have had 
but two agents, and reall)'^ no confidant. The only agent 
thus far of any service to me, has been the child, 
whom I have won to love me quite as well as her 
miserable mother and a thousand times better than 
her hard-handed and cruel father. I have won her 
here to this lodge, for more hours than her mother 
knew or her father guessed, teaching her to read. 
Why, you can well understand. Once, I thought that 
the villain must have some suspicion of me and my 
motives ; for I caught him beating the poor child for 
the crime of trying to read, and threatened that my 
tribe should burn his house if he repeated the cruelty. 
I do not know that he has ever done so ; but my 
scholar told me, the next day, with her little heart 
broken, that the brute had thrown the half dozen 
books in the house, into the fire! From that last 
action I would have known, had I previously doubted, 
that he dared not allow her to become too intelligent ; 
and then I redoubled my care and my efforts. I have 
taught her to read, and read very well indeed, writing 
as well as the text of books. And I have made her 
a little hypocrite — as she would have become, how- 


424 


The spur of Mo^imouih. 


ever, some day, without any aid from me, being one 
of your deceptive sex. I have induced her to ex- 
amine, slyly, when her father was absent and her 
overworked mother busy, any written papers that 
she could discover, and lately to bring me the first 
words they contained. Within the last fortnight I 
have been rewarded by the knowledge that the doc- 
ument of my life is there and intact, and by learning 
the opening words of it. Neither her father or 
mother knows that she can read, or even spell out a 
word. Within a week I shall have her go farther, 
and become a thief ” 

“ Sir Edmund ! ” 

This interruption by his auditor was somewhat 
ambiguous in tone and manner. It may merely have 
meant (some of the late avocations of the lad)'' being 
remembered) that he was using awkward words to 
describe a very plain transaction ; and it may have 
been a suggestion that this leading of a child into 
continued deception and that worse action following, 
was paying too high a price, in the soul of another, 
even for personal right and the straightening of an 
involved life. 

“ Well, perhaps it is not of the very highest order 
of morality,” the narrator proceeded. “ But what 
would you have.? How else fight fire than'with fire, 
when water runs short ? — or the devil otherwise than 
with brimstone ? At all events, if I can so order it, 
the child shall bring me those papers within the 
M’^eek ; and I will carry her away to England and a 
better life than any that lies before her here, if our 
friend the General Commanding-in-Chief does not 
set all the Monmouth woods in a low, before we can 
find coast and ship.” 


Iiidian 'John s Plans and Age7tts, 425 

For a moment, then, Catharine Trafford sat silent, 
as in in deep and troubled reflection. Then she 
said : 

“ Yes, perhaps it would be best so. Yes, within 
the week, before Sir Henry moves too closely in this 
direction, and the Jersey militia make warm work in 
his rear, as they would even do without orders.” 

Then another pause of a moment, unbroken by the 
occupant of the basket, followed by her asking: 
‘*You said that you had another assistant, who had not 
yet served you to any extent : may I ask if that is 
another child whom you have (do not flare when I 
speak the word !) — corrupted 

“Oh, no ! ” and something like a smile went over 
the grave face of the chief at the antithesis involved. 
“ No — my other employee is a negro, blacker than 
tradition and more contradictory in character than 
the hero of any romance yet written. He bears the 
classical appellation of Marc Antony, and is the chief 
‘hand,’ as they call such laborers here, on a farm 
lying some two or three miles distant. The master 
of that farm is often absent, in the patriot service ; and 
Marc Antony, who has a high impression of his own 
consequence, sometimes employs our friend Foy as 
a helper in farm-work. I have instructed Marc, who 
suspects me to be a good friend to the cause, to worm 
out of Foy, the Tory, any secrets that can be arrived 
at by coaxing or carneying — two arts of which the 
old family negroes of these States are perfect masters, 
— and to keep him under watch at any and every 
moment when he can do so, bringing me account 
of anything that seems mysterious in the scoundrel’s 
word or deed. Of course this special agent has 
brought me scores of unmeaning reports, out 


426 The Spur of Monmouth. 

of which I could make nothing ; but equally of 
course I have paid him for them, as per contract, and 
encouraged him to persevere, with the promise of 
other additions to his limited store, and the belief 
that he is all the while serving the cause as well as 
myself. Not much in my second agent, probably, 
is there, whatever I may find in the other 

“ I am not too sure of the value of the one or the 
worthlessness of the other, uncle,” replied the niece, 
very gravely and after a brief space of apparent re- 
flection. “ My own limited experience has been, 
that those who promised most, in any difficult detail, 
did least — and vice versa. Do you really depend upon 
that child’s bringing you the papers, without dis- 
covery ? I confess that I doubt her being able to do 
so, — or whether she may not give out, through fear, 
at the last, or manage to be discovered at the critical 
moment destined to make or mar all.” 

“ Eh ? ” queried the chief, as if suddenly aroused to 
a new thought or troubled with the awakening of one 
lying dormant. 

“I only said that I feared,” Catharine Traffbrd 
proceeded. “ And if she does not bring you the 
papers ?” 

“ In that case,” answered Indian John, in a lower 
and more intense voice than he had lately been using, 
“ it will be the'worse for one Richard Foy than if he 
sent them to me with his own hands ! For this is to 
be a battle-field, as I believe before many days — this 
region, somewhere where Clinton can best make his 
stand against being driven entirely beyond the Hud- 
son. Then, if not before, the long immunity of the 
Tory will be at an end. The Lenni-Lenape will at- 
tack his house, and burn it, at night, with or without 


htdian John s Plaits and Adonis. 427 

himself; and it will be odd if Nekaneshwa cannot 
manage to secure what most interests him, when the 
roof is blazing and the residents are fleeing for their 
lives.’' 

The occupant of the basket was no longer its oc- 
cupant, as he uttered the last words of this reply. 
His pipe had long before been allowed to go out ; 
and he was on his feet, striding the limited breadth 
of the wigwam with a force of footfall, even moc- 
casined as he was, that brought more than one warn- 
ing growl from Bruno at the door. Suddenly, and 
when as yet no comment had been hazarded by the 
hearer on the last threat uttered by her uncle, an- 
other sound from the throat of the hound, a short 
bark of welcome, arrested the attention of his master 
and^caused him to step rapidly to the half-curtained 
doorway of the lodge. In a moment he returned, but 
not alone ; and then, for the first time for years, 
Catharine Trafford saw the ill-clothed and shrinking 
figure of little Esther, who seemed, now, to cower 
even in the presence of her friend. The master ad- 
dressed her with a kindness evidently habitual and 
intended to reassure the little waif of humanity so 
entirely unable to assert herself ; and Catharine was 
about to rise from the couch to bid her welcome, when 
that occurred which materially changed the whole 
course of feeling in the breast of the principal actor 
in that odd drama. 

Poor little Esther fell on her knees, clasping those 
of Indian John with a blending of love and shame, 
and holding down her uncovered and uncared-for 
head, as she managed with drttficulty to say, retaining 
the form of speech to which she had been most used 
in that presence ; 


428 The Spur of Mo 7 imouth. 

“ Nekaneshvva will be very angry with poor little 
Running Brier, and perhaps he will beat her, now, as 
her father does when he does not like what she has 
done. But Running Brier has not done this — no, be 
sure that she has only done what Nekaneshwa told 
her to do. The talking leaves ” 

“What ails little Running Brier? What has hap- 
pened to the talking leaves, that Nekaneshwa should 
be angry? Let the Running Brier speak, for Nek- 
aneshwa waits, though he is a great chief and has 
many warriors !” spoke the pseudo-Indian, rapidly 
and with an air of authority, though at the same time 
he caressed the lowered head inviting his hand, as a 
token that he was in friendship with her and that she 
might speak freely. 

“ Nekaneshwa is very good to poor little Runriing 
Brier, but he will be very angry when he knows. 
Some one has taken away the box that had the 
speaking leaves about the man and the woman who 
were married — oh, so long ago ! Running Brier has 
looked everywhere for it, and she cannot find it. 
What will Nekaneshwa do to her, now that it is 
gone ? ” 

Seldom has anything so pitiful in word and manner, 
been spoken by the lips of a mere child, whose dic- 
tion all the while seemed so much older than her 
years, from the very fact that she maintained the 
formal and poetical shape of the aboriginal speech. 
Indian John, as he heard the words and dimly com- 
prehended what they boded to himself, of the quest 
of years made vain in a moment, found no words to 
reply to her, and only uttered the extorted exclama- 
tion : “ Gone ! My God ! Gone ! 

At the same moment his quick observance saw 


429 


Indian Johns Plans and Agents, 

something in the face of Catharine, glorying in the 
confirmation of her doubts of a few moments previous ; 
and temporarily that expression turned his heart to 
suspicion and his blood to gall. 

“ Is the Running Brier speaking with a double 
tongue to the great chief, Nekaneshwa? Has she 
been told by her father to tell lies to her friend, and 
has she obeyed him ? he demanded, in a sterner 
voice than the child had ever before heard from his 
lips, except when threatening her father on the day 
of her cruel beating and the destruction of her few 
poor books. He even grasped the thin arm as he 
spoke, perhaps a little painfully to the child, who 
broke down entirely then and there, under the 
double pressure of grief and fear. 

“Let Nekaneshwa kill the Running Brier with his 
hand, and not with his tongue, if he will not believe 
her when she says what is true !” she rather sobbed 
than spoke, cowering at his feet and seeming indeed 
to expect some stroke of anger from that hand which 
had always before been so kind, Catherine, at once, 
with a gesture of impatience directed at the man so 
moved, sprang irom her couch, raised the little 
shrinking figure, and had it half in her arms and half 
on the couch beside her, before Nekaneshwa could 
possibly have intervened if he would. 

“The Running Brier is mistaken,” he said, thus re- 
called to himself, and again patting the head of the 
child by an effort. “ Nekaneshwa was making sport. 
He believes the words of his white papoose, who is 
good and speaks with a single tongue.” 

So little is sometimes needed to bind up a heart 
half-broken ! In a moment the child was out of the 
arms of Catharine, off the couch and at the feet of 


430 


The Sptir of Mo7i7no'uth. 

the chief, again hugging his knees, but this time in 
joy and gratitude, as she faltered out : 

“ Now the Running Brier is happy— oh, so happy. 
Nekaneshwa has told her to live, and she will live. 
She will find the speaking leaves again for Nekan- 
eshwa. So happy ! — oh, so happy ! ” 

Tears did not often visit the eyes of Catharine 
Trafford, but they gathered there at that moment and 
at a spectacle so touching. However Indian John 
may have been touched, the habit of his tribe had 
been so well learned that he could conceal the emo- 
tion. He raised the little waif from the ground, very 
calmly though kindly, kissed her on the cheek and 
patted it, then said : 

“ The Running Brier is good, and Nekaneshwa loves 
her. She had better go back to her father’s wigwam, 
now, before they know that she has been here. She 
must say nothing of what she has seen ! Nekanesh- 
wa, who is a great chief and has many eyes and hands, 
will find the talking leaves. He has said.” 

The child looked up, hope and joy once more in 
her eyes, so often dimmed with pain and the sorrow 
of childhood. She kissed the dusky hand of the 
chief, looked for a moment with an odd enquiry at 
his companion, then darted away and was gone from 
the wigwam, with as much celerity as if she had been 
of the race whose speech she followed. Bruno merely 
repeated his short bark of welcome as she flew by. 
When she was gone, Nekaneshwa, the “great chief,” 
showed how much of belief there had been in the 
last speech made to little Esther, by rather throwing 
than seating himself on the abandoned basket, drop- 
ping his head low down between his hands, and 
more moaning out than saying in his natural voice : 


431 


Indian John's Plans and Agents. 

“ Gone, at last ! He has seen her, and he has sus- 
pected. He has taken them away— perhaps destroyed 
them. So many years, and all wasted ! Oh, my God, 
how many more ? ” 

Events sometimes crowd together with great ra- 
pidity, even as at other periods they keep far apart 
like enemies or drag themselves slowly along like 
wounded reptiles. Habitually, perhaps constitution- 
ally, we misjudge in one direction or the other. 
Indian John better knew this, half an hour later, than 
he had ever done in all his life. 

Night had been slowly advancing, since first the 
chief was seen standing by the couch of his niece. 
It had fallen, so far as to half dusk, when that hope- 
less position was taken on the corn-basket. It grew 
to full dusk, before the bowed head was raised. Then 
that head came suddenly up, as Bruno gave another 
short bark, but very different, to the accustomed ear, 
from the one that had welcomed Running Brier. 
Nekaneshwa sprang from his seat and went again to 
the door. Through the dusk a short, dark figure, 
with something beneath one of the arms, entered as 
he raised the fragment of curtain, and Marc Antony 
stood before him and before the only-half-instructed 
eyes of his niece. 

“Golly, Masser John, I’se so glad to fine you at 
home — ’dare to gracious I is. Tought you mout'been 
done gone away, and den wot dis nigger do?” 

“ So you wanted me, very much, Markey, did you ?” 
asked the chief, in response. ^ 

’ “ 'Clare to gracious, Masser John, ef I knows. Ony 
knows dis, dat I'se in a debbil of a hurry, ’cause it’s 
night, and pore Masser Tom’s dead, and Masser 
Lewis is done gone after dem Pine-Fagans, and dere’s 


432 The spur of Monmouth. 

nobody home, 'cept de wimmen — dey’s no good, any- 
way.” 

“ And what was it that you wanted, Markey ? Speak 
quick, if you are in a hurry. And I will make a light 
while you are doing so.” 

He went again to the little shelf, struck fire with his 
flint and steel, and lit what seemed to be a stem of 
cotton-wick in a small dish of rancid oil, which, when 
in flame, served to throw a dim light around the lodge 
and at least reveal the persons there present. 

“ Hope I may go to glory ! ” the negro exclaimed, 
as the light enabled him to see that there was a lady 
in view. “ Hope I may nebber die ef I tought dere 
was hny wimmen here ! Sarvice, Missis, and hope you 
won’t ’member what I said. Howsomever, dere ain’t 
no time for compliminx, no how. Masser John, I 
cotched dat ar white nigger Foy a burying .dis yer 
box, out in de woods, dis mornin’. Dunno if he seed 
dat I seed him, any time, or no — tink not, ’cause he 
went on a doin’ of it. Sez I to myself, when he’d 
done gone away: ‘Marc Antony,’ says I, ‘dunno 
what’s in dat ere box, but it’s a commin’ up, and it’s 
a goin’ to Masser Indian John.’ So up it come, dough 
twas monsus hot, I tell you, diggin dere widout any 
shovel, wid dese ere hands and a stick. Howsom- 
ever, here it is, jes as he buried it : hope I may die 
ef I did anyting more, ’sides jest lookin’ in to see 
dat it was papers. Mebbe dey isn’t of no consekens, 
no how: dis nigger doesn’t know ; and he hain’t got 
nobody, now, since Masser Tom’s done gone dead, to 
show 'em to and ax, ’cept Masser Indian John.” 

He laid down an oblong box of tin, as he concluded 
— a box that had once been japanned, though now 
only patches of the color clung to it, and the place 


433 


Indian John s Plans and Agents. 

was supplied by a multiplicity of batterings and 
bruises. It is truth to say that Nekaneshwa was al- 
most totally overwhelmed, in the hope and fear of 
what that box might and might not contain : that 
while glances meaning so much passed between the 
uncle and the niece, only partially recognizable in 
the dim light, neither found half the words to reply 
to the negro, that would have been summoned into 
use under other circumstances. Marc Antony, as he 
alleged, was really in haste, and, his duty done, had 
no thought of lingering. With a simple : “ Hope 
you will look arter dem ere papers, anyway, Masser 
Indian John, and not let dat ere white-nigger Foyget 
em again, ef dey is wuff anyting !” and a final bow to 
the lady that was half curtsey, accompanied by “ Good 
night. Missis ! ” and “ Good night, Masser Indian 
John ! ” he was out of the wigwam and away, only 
saluted by Bruno with a bark that seemed one of im- 
patience, by way of farewell to a doubtful though not 
dangerous visitor. 

Indian John had been a little dazed by the last 
event, beyond a question. For a moment this con- 
dition lasted, after the negro had left the wdgwam. 
In the next, that revulsion came, so inevitable with 
intense natures, however held under restraint. He 
was down on his knees beside the couch, his dark 
face all interest and expectation, while Catharine 
TrafFord bent above, only less excited than the prin- 
cipal actor. He was literally tearing open the box, 
drawing out paper after paper, by the dim light of 
the impromptu lamp — opening them and throwing 
aside, with gesture after gesture of disappointment, 
and an acquired Indian grunt as an occasional ac- 
companiment. Then, as he opened one and read the 

19 


434 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


lines at the top, he fell forward on the lounge, the 
remainder unread and the paper grasped tightly in 
his hands, all the mock-Indian stoicism forgotten, 
and the concentrated anxieties of a life in the cry : 

“At last ! Thank God, at last! My mother’s honor 
and my own rank are both in my hands : get them 
from me again who dares ! ” 


CHAPTER XLIII. 


THE TRAGEDY OF THE BROOK. 

There was some doubt lingering in the mind of 
Marc Antony, and expressed by him to Indian John 
in the last chapter, whether he had or had not been 
observed by Richard Foy, while ma-king that recon- 
noisance of the action of the latter, leading to the 
exhuming of the important box and its delivery to 
the true owner, therein recorded. And among the 
wonders pressing upon the mind of poor little Esther, 
was the question whether any knowledge on the part 
of her father, that she had been meddling with the 
papers in that box, had been the cause of its removal 
and the placing of it in hiding. It is the business of 
this chapter to answer at least one of those ques- 
tions in the affirmative, and to record the somewhat 
important action following the acquisition of that 
one item of knowledge, on the part of the late custo- 
dian of the precious documents. 

A hot day of that June destined to be so 'excep- 
tionally torrid in the Middle States, and to go upon 
record enduring through a hundred years as the very 
hottest month within old-time recollection. A hay- 
field on the farm of John Burt, adjoining that of the 
Waynes. Two figures, of people in a state of semi- 
exhaustion from the really-severe labor of mowing 
the ?:lover and timothy-grass of that field, and the 
ideality belonging to the oriental blood and making 


436 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


that labor much severer in imagination than in reality. 
In other words, two negroes lying under a tree, in 
the upper part of the field, perspiring at every pore, 
but keeping up that hysterical excitement which 
might otherwise have diminished, by an unceasing 
gabble, after the manner of the race, and compounded 
of that superstitious, earnest and half-childish drol- 
lery, also characteristic of the sons of Ham in those 
olden days when they alternately enjoyed and suf- 
fered the estate of slavery. 

The two, Marc Antony, “changing works” with 
his comrade of the Burt estate, in the mowing afore- 
mentioned, so as to secure the return-aid of the 
other in cutting the grass on the farm which he 
regarded as his own ; and Julius Cesar, the thrall of 
John Burt, already alluded to at an earlier period of 
this relation, as very like Marc Antony in stature and 
general appearance, while also his rival in those feats 
of strength and agility astonishing admiring gather- 
ings at times and places of rural relaxation. 

The period was two days later than that on which 
we have noted the presence of Marc Antony in the 
wigwam ; and the hour was some three or four o’clock 
in the afternoon, when the sun of June has sometimes 
a habit of being even more scorching and blinding, 
in the Middle States, than at high noon. What of 
freshness the morning had brought, was long since 
consumed in the actual furnace of the sun ; and the 
pretence at a sea-breeze, scarcely more than a pre- 
tence at that distance from the coast, had not yet 
commenced to revive the senses drooping in the in- 
effable sultriness. 

“Clare to man,” mumbled Julius Cesar, after a 
moment or two of silence, the result of the tongue 


The Tragedy of the Brook. 


437 


having temporarily become too dry, from long use, 
for any further effort — “ dare to man, Marc Antony, 
dis yere is jes dreffie. Seems to me we is cookin, yere, 
’stead of doin any work. Whar’s dat jug dat seems 
always a gittin out of de way as if it was afraid ob 
sumthin.” 

“ Mou’t berry well get out ob de way, to keep clar 
ob de lips of sich a dry darkey as you is ! ” replied 
Marc Antony, always a little disposed to assume cer- 
tain airs of superiority over his fellow servant, in 
spite of the fact that he probably loved him better 
than any other creature of mortal mould, “de family, 
sah ! ” excepted. “ Seems to me, Julius, you’s drunk 
dat ere jug dry, ’bout ten times dis blessed day, pur- 
pose to git 'scuses for goin’ down to de brook and 
fillin’ it, ’stead ob tendin to your work. Dat’s so, 
Julius, all de time.” 

“Gor amighty, what a big one ! ” replied the tra- 
duced Julius, in the same tone of banter. “ Didn’t 
go but twice, no how; and when I come back, bofe 
times, you jes put dem big lips ob yourn to the mouf 
ob dat jug, and, golly, dere wasn’t water enough left 
in it to wet de toe ob a grasshopper. Dat am a fac, 
for suah ! ’’ 

Julius, evidently the more thirsty of the two, con- 
cluded this replication at a little distance from the 
place where he had begun it— having laboriously 
arisen from his recumbent posture, cut, what some 
decades after would have been called a “ pigeon- 
wing,” by way of showing that he was not entirely 
exhausted, — and proceeded a distance of half a dozen 
steps to a small clump of bushes, from the grass at 
the bottom of which he drew out the unreliable and 
upbraided jug. Coming back with that inelegant but 


438 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


useful bit of drab stone-ware, he took out from the 
mouth the corn-cob doing duty for a cork, and first 
smelled and then tried the experiment of looking 
therein, after the manner that topers have been 
known to assume in similar cases, when whiskey, not 
water, was the desideratum. Neither of the two 
senses discovered any water; the afternoon sun was 
sending the perspiration in streams down the ebony 
face of Julius, who needed additional liquid within, 
under such a constant drain of it without ; and Marc 
Antony lay provokingly on his back and did not seem 
disposed to make any movement whatever. 

Suddenly Julius bethought him of a solution of 
the difliculty at that moment pressing upon him — the 
difficulty of obtaining the coveted drink without 
going down to the brook. That species of labor, as 
Marc Antony observed, had been cordially welcomed 
by Julius, earlier in the day, when it was an alterna- 
tive to the severer strain of mowing : it was by no 
means so tempting, now, when the alternative was 
simply lying under the tree. It was advisable to send 
Marc Antony in the present instance, while he re- 
clined supine ; and Julius Cesar, like a true descendant 
of that great warrior who was no doubt also a great 
strategist, had arrived at the means of bringing about 
that consummation. 

“Tell you what we’se do,” he announced to his 
compatriot, setting down the empty jug and dropping 
again beneath the welcome shade. “We’se jest hab 
a game ob sebben up, ef you ain't afeard ob me, kase 
you knows I does handle dem ere pasteboards dreffle.” 

“ ’Feard ob you, you cullud pusson ob no conse- 
quence ! “ exclaimed Marc Antony. “ Why, where 
was you brought up, eh, chile } G’long ! ’’ 


The Tragedy of the Brook. 


439 


“Jest show dat you isn’t afear dob me, den,” went 
on the canny and calculating Julius, at that crisis 
succeeding in the extrication from his pocket of the 
remains of a pack of cards, perhaps thirty in number, 
but so charged with grease that they would have 
outweighed two full packs in original condition, 
and so toned down with smirches that anything 
staring or high-colored in the natural appearance was 
effectually removed. “ Dere is dem ere pasteboards,” 
continued the owner of those means of amusement, 
depositing them on the ground and leering invita- 
tion in the face of his adversary, “and if you feels 
like it, jest take hold ob ’em ! De nigger dat wins 
dis game ob sebben up, don’t go arter no jug ob 
water, no how ; and de todder gemman — he does : 
dat am about de fac — eh, honey ” 

“ Humph ! dat means dat you has ’eluded to go 
youseff! ” coolly replied Marc Antony, raising him- 
self sufficiently on the elbow to allow of handling the 
implements. “Jest take a look, while I shuffle ’em, 
to see dat dere ain’t nobody cornin'; ’cause ef John 
Burt should see you, Julius, a doin dis afore dis yere 
field was down, oh, my !” 

Julius really took a somewhat anxious glance 
around, for the purpose indicated, while Marc Antony 
shuffled the greasy pack, it is to be supposed satis- 
factorily, as, assuming the deal, he turned up a Jack 
of exceedingly greasy visage, and thus scored one for 
the important game at the very commencement, 
while Julius Cesar, observant of the advantage thus 
secured, merely remarked : “ Tole you you was afeard ; 
and so you was, honey, for you dussent eben cut for 
deal ! But jest go on ! go on ! and m ’bout fibe minutes 
a nigger ob your size ’ll be makin’ tracks across dis 
yere field for de brook!” 


440 


The Spur of Monmouth. 

, Sufficiently aroused, after the first hand, to sit up 
and make an imaginary table of the ground between 
them, the two friendly rivals became so absorbed in 
the game that Marc Antony even forgot “de Hu- 
shuns''and Julius Cesar scarcely remembered that 
he was thirsty. How little either of the twain knew 
what was involved in the issue of that game ! — as, to 
put the truism at its real value, how little most of us 
know of the omens of any of the games of life ! 
There did not lie in the trial of skill, certainly, so 
much of vital interest to the nation, as that which 
may have lain in any game having been played, and 
the patriot scouts thus kept in the proper place to 
fulfil the decrees of fate, on that after day of 1780 
when John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van 
Wert shuffled the cards that were really those of 
John Andre’s destiny — an instance of their use, which 
so apotheosized what their opponents called “ the 
• devil’s prayer-book,” that for many a year it was the 
habit of many defenders to utter the nonsense that 
“playing at cards saved America.” 

By no means of such national consequence, as al- 
ready said, was this contest of the Wayne and Burt 
adherents. And yet, once more, how much was 
really involved in the game, which seemed to both, 
and would have seemed to any onlooker, little more 
than a rough pleasantry ! The advantage gained by 
Marc Antony at the commencement, was not lost 
thereafter, in spite of the fingers of Julius performing 
certain feats with the greasy cards, that would have 
added more, at this day, to reputation for skill than 
honesty. The turning of a third soiled Jack, at the 
crisis when the score stood Marc Antony 6, Julius 
Cesar, 5, brought the contest to a sudden conclusion, 


The Tragedy of the Brook. 


441 


with a slight howl of trilimph and “ I tole you so, 
nigger ! " from the victor, and a “ Seems to me, Marc, 
dat you don’t done anyting else, dan turn up dem 
Jacks !” from the defeated. Whereupon Julius, no 
longer able to endure the torments of thirst, discon- 
solately rose from the ground, took up the jug, and 
with a parting shot : “ Yah ! gib you some next time, 
for dat, ole feller ! ” flung on his broken remnant of 
a hat and departed for the brook. 

The negro, in order to escape the sun, made his 
way down the slight hill in the shelter of the side- 
woods, and came, by that choice, into sight, at some 
distance, of a power more deadly than any serpent or 
wild animal that might have been feared as still an 
inhabitant of the half-cleared country. This was 
Richard Foy, at that moment in the edge of the op- 
posite wood, less than a quarter of a mile distant, and 
who only saw the one figure moving down the hill, 
jug in hand, to the brook at the bottom. If hell ever 
raged in a human heart, it unquestionably was aflame 
in that of Foy at the instant of making this discovery, 
which had no corresponding one of his vicinity on 
the part of the negro. It is not certain whether the 
abductor of the valuable papers had known or feared 
their being visited and examined by poor little Esther 
— probably, as he had vented no cruelty of punish- 
ment upon the child, he really neither knew nor 
suspected her action in the matter. Probably the 
removal, and that interment which Marc Antony had 
witnessed and rendered worse than useless by pos- 
sessing himself of the papers and putting them into the 
power of Indian John, was merely a measure of pre- 
caution, in view of the intelligence which as a trusted 
Tory he possessed, that the troops of Sir Henry 
19* 


442 


' The Spur of Mo7t77iouik, 


Clinton were moving across the country in that di- 
rection— that the Jersey militia were out, harrassing 
the British rear — and that Washington himself might 
be following, with the possibility of troops and fight- 
ing in the neighborhood, some sudden necessity for 
■ flight, and the need of having his most valued trea- 
sure buried where it would be beyond the reach of 
capture or destruction in the event of his house being 
rifled or burned. 

Meanwhile, what Marc Antony at once suspected 
and doubted, was only too sure. He had been seen 
and recognized by Foy, in the immediate neighbor- 
hood of the interment of the papers, and only a few 
moments before the accomplishment of that act. And 
without doubt some suspicion, founded on that re- 
cognition, had made the secretor afraid of the security 
of his precious hoard, and sent him, only a little while 
before the playing of that memorable game of cards 
by the negroes in the Burt field, to look after the 
safety of the deposite. To find that the ground had 
really been disturbed— that the box was gone, with 
all the guilty hope of years ! Words would be weak, 
and words are not needed, to paint the rage which 
possessed him at and following the discovery. Before 
(so far as known) only a thief and a brute, from that 
moment Richard Foy was a murderer, in wish and 
intention. That the negro had indeed watched him 
and immediately thereafter removed the box, he had 
no doubt whatever ; that the papers were lost to him 
beyond recovery, seemed almost certain ; that, if ever 
opportunity offered, he would kill that negro, and 
thus at once seal his mouth against additional revela- 
tion, and indulge his own feeling of revenge, was a 
resolution forming itself instantly and irrevocably. 


The Tragedy .of the Brook. 


443 


Opportunity ? He had it, then ! He saw, across 
the field and in the edge of the opposite wood, the 
moving figure of the negro, whose identity (the re- 
semblance being kept in mind) he did not doubt for 
a moment. The seeds of murder, so lately planted, 
grew to full vigor within the instant. That the negro 
was going to the brook for water, the jug in his hand 
gave evidence. Well he knew the spot and its con- 
venience: then and there the black devil who had 
dared to rob him, should die ! 

Stealthily as one of the Delawares had crept upon 
his foe, and almost as quickl}^ in spite of the intense 
heat, the man so rapidly graduating in high crime, 
plunged deeper into the edge of the wood, made a 
short circuit, and came out in the thick alders at the 
wood side of the brook, before the slow-moving 
Julius reached it from the other. The stream had 
here a considerable depth though little width, with 
lower alders on the up-hill side; and the spot where 
the jug would be filled was easily known from the 
bushes being at that point cleared away on that side 
by a narrow cattle-path. But a minute or two, and 
the devilish ingenuity and calculation were rewarded. 
Not seeing too clearly, through the thick alders, he 
yet saw the negro approach the brook and stoop 
down as if to fill his jug. The noise of the rapid 
stream, over stones, made a movement safe. He 
crept through the bushes to the verge, and — was 
ever opportunity so given,? — poor Julius Cesar, who 
should have been Marc Antony, was not only kneel- 
ing down to fill his jug, but had been tempted by his 
overwhelming thirst to take one long pull from the 
fountain, by throwing himself across the stream, with 
hands and feet on either side, so as to apply his 


444 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


mouth to the cool current ! One leap, as Richard 
Foy saw the helplessness of the position, and he 
was on the back of his victim, the head of the latter 
forced under water, and held down in spite of his first 
struggles. They lasted, those struggles, even less 
time than he could have hoped : the poor fellow, 
unable to rise or turn over, strangled in so brief'a 
time that the murderer was almost startled at his 
own success and the suddenness with which a human 
life could be brought to an end. Still, and when it 
was quite sure that he was dead, Foy held his victim’s 
head beneath the water: then, aware of the danger 
of discovery consequent upon remaining too long in 
that situation, he released his prey, who remained 
motionless, the head still below the surface, and the 
jug, now filled without effort, still grasped in one 
dead hand. 

Then followed, what not infrequently follows upon 
the commission of a crime that has been even hid- 
eously cool in the manner of its performance. A 
sudden panic, striking the murderer like a blow or a 
chill, leading to the fear that he might already have 
been overlooked, blended with the dread of remain- 
ing longer in the presence of that dead Thing just 
made from a living man. Even turning away his 
head before betaking himself to flight, the cruel 
homicide literally crawled away through the bushes, 
his face white, his teeth chattering, and the entire 
physical and mental systems equally unnerved, 
so that the grip of the avenger of blood on his 
shoulder would have seemed the most natural of 
ends to the whole nightmare of self-wrought horror. 

Marc Antony, less thirsty than his comrade, and 
exulting in having “ turned Jack ” to such good 


The Tragedy of ihe Brook. 


445 


effect, was yet thirsty and after a time a trifle impa- 
tient. He enjoyed his quiet and ease under the tree 
for a few minutes, whistling, and mentally taking 
care of “ de family ; ” but impatience at last over- 
came him, in collusion with his drouth. He looked 
anxiously for the figure of Julius Cesar, returning 
from the brook, saw nothing of it, and half came to 
the conclusion that that miserable darkey had taken 
his revenge for the lost game by abandoning his jug 
and the work together, and going quietly homeward, 
chuckling over his own waiting and helpless rage. 
But no — Julius would scarcely have dared to present 
himself before the eyes of John Burt or any of his 
family, at so premature an hour. Something must 
have happened to him — a fit, possibly* or a fall into 
the brook, or “dem Hushuns.” 

Then Marc Antony arose from his recumbent posi- 
tion and looked around him. No sign, yet, of the 
returning jug-bearer. He grew more anxious, and a 
trifle frightened, when quite half an hour had gone 
by. Then he could endure the suspense no longer, 
and, despite the heat, made for the watering-place at 
the brook, by that nearest line between the two 
places avoiding the woods and its circuit. He came 
upon the brook and Julius, and at first believed that 
the lazy darkey had been playing him a trick of de- 
lay and gone to sleep at the edge of the water. But 
a moment later his eyes bulged with terror when he 
saw that his comrade’s head was under water— when 
he mustered strength and courage to pull him out, 
and saw that he was dead ! 

“Pore ole Julius! — done gone and drownded his- 
seff, or fell in, tryin’ to fill dat misable jug !” was 
all the verbal comment that he could make, his eyes 


446 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


filling with tears and his throat choking with one of 
the heaviest sorrows that he had ever known. For 
quite a minute, so affected, he sat on the bank, with 
the lifeless head and shoulders on his lap, and even 
worse confounded than he had been, months before, 
at the time of the “ stock exchange.” Then he saw 
something, through the Clearwater, lying at the bot- 
tom of the brook — something that poor Julius had 
dropped, beyond a doubt. He reverently laid down 
the body of his comrade, stooped low over the 
brook, and drew forth a leathern wallet that he never 
remembered having seen Julius carry. It had in it 
some papers and a few coins, the weight of the latter 
having sunken it to the bottom as it fell from the per- 
son of the stooping owner. The poor fellow could 
not read a word of the writing on the papers ; but 
there was one who could and did read, two hours 
later, a letter addressed to Richard Foy, with other 
documents belonging to a man of that name ; and 
then and thereafter Marc Antony dimly understood, 
if he gave not immediate sign of his knowledge, how, 
why, and by what hand had been brought about the 
death of “ pore ole Julius ! ” Need it be added that, 
so knowing, he remembered, and waited, after the 
manner of those orientals whom we sometimes fail 
to recognize in the ” dusky children of the sun ? ” 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE STORY OF MONMOUTH FIGHT. 

The history of the Battle of Monmouth has been 
so often written and rehearsed, in the earlier part of 
that eight-and-ninety years which have elapsed since 
it occurred, that any attempt to re-write it would be 
performing a work of great difficulty without a cor- 
responding necessity to warrant it. It was but a 
trifling conflict, in the numbers engaged or the loss 
sustained by either combatant, in comparison with 
many that followed it at no great distance, and those 
which have still later succeeded it, at home and 
abroad. What new interest, then, in this combat of 

1778? 

And yet, what the Men of the Revolution, who had 
shared in it or the conflicts preceding or following, 
always designated as “Monmouth Fighf,” had pecu- 
liarities of surrounding and effect, making it of much 
more importance than the great average of battles 
that have had less than a thousand slain on either 
side of the opposing forces. It has been already 
said that it had in it some of the features of the “ turn- 
ing point and it is well known that it was the car- 
rying out of one of Washington’s well-considered 
plans, the driving of the British forces from New 
Jersey, of which he had said some months earlier ; 
“ If we can oblige them to evacuate the Jerseys, we 
must drive them to the utmost distress ; for they 


448 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


have depended upon the supplies from that State for 
their winter’s support.” Again, the battle was fought 
on a Sunday — something judged of more importance, 
at that less distant remove than the present from the 
Puritan period, and when neither the fact had been 
so well illustrated nor the adage made so broadly 
known in literature and the world, that: “There are 
no Sundays in war-time.” Still again, the heat of 
the June weather was inordinate, and the additional 
suffering as well as greater mortality thus entailed, 
something likely to linger in tradition, long after 
other events of even more importance should grow 
dim in recollection. And yet again, it was at Mon- 
mouth Fight that the master-hand of the struggle 
came into collision with one who had before found 
few superiors and acknowledged none, in the meeting 
of Washington and Lee on the field, and the utter- 
ance of those words destined to slay a career as 
effectually as the sword could have ended a life. 

Under such circumstances, it is not strange that 
around this battle of June 28th, 1778, should have 
been woven much more of romance than really be- 
longed to it, -and that to the event should have been 
attributed something more of effect upon the patriot 
cause than it really exercised. It is not strange that 
more than one local ballad, dealing with Washington, 
Lee, Forman, and others immediately connected with 
the movements and fortunes of the day, came early 
from the lips or the pens of rural poets, and were 
trolled in cracked treble, long after, by the old sol- 
diers who survived it. Of these, scarcely a couplet 
now remains, worth recalling; and it is to a rhyme 
of a much later period, called “The Battle of Mon- 
mouth — a Ballad of ‘After the War,' ” that we must 


The Story of Monmouth Fight. 


449 


recur, for all the poetry at present within memory, 
connected with this conflict. Picked up, floating 
about in the newspapers of that period, many a long 
year ago, and unclaimed as some similar waif might be, 
discovered drifting aimlessly at sea,— it yet seems to 
demand a place here, before entering upon a rapid 
resume of the events bringing on, accompanying, 
and following the battle. In the ballad, one of the 
veterans of ’78, a few years after, is telling the story, 
in other words but with the same spirit and the same 
effect as it was often told, many years later, to the 
present writer by the pensioners of his charge : 


“ ’Tis good ten years since Mercer fell, 
Borne down at Princeton fight ; 

’Tis good ten years since hill and dell 
With battle were alight. 

The Hessians have gone back, to smoke 
Their long Dutch pipes at home ; 

The sword of war is bent and broke, 

And peaceful days have come. 

“ Earl Moira, on his Irish land. 

Forgets how Rawdon fought. 

And Clinton holds no more command 
Where daring deeds are wrought. 

Old ’seventy-six has glided by, 

And ’seventy -eight passed on ; 

And under freedom’s happy sky 
We till the fields we won. 

“The harvest waves on Monmouth ground ; 
But I have seen the day 
A bloodier harvest might be found. 
Stretched out in grim array : 


The Spur of Mo/tmoufh. 

When patriot men and hireling men 
Lay quiet, side by side, 

With ghastly wounds, scarce counted then, 

Tb tell how each had died. 

“ Oh, friends ! it was a bitter day, 

As e’er in summer came 
To drive all cooling breath away 
And heat the air to flame. 

Beneath our light and scanty dress 
We bowed, as it were steel : 

The very sand like burning brass 
Seemed all the day to feel. 

“ The water-springs were parched and dry. 

And dry the meadow-greens : 

The muddy ooze we carried by 
Grew hot in our canteens ; 

Yet well we bore the scorching day. 

And bore the battle’s brunt ; 

And not a soldier slunk away. 

While brave men led our front. 

“ But once we trembled — when we stood 
Beneath the cannon’s beat. 

The foe on-rolling like a flood 
And Lee in full retreat ; 

But Burr dashed in beneath the shot. 

And Washington came on, 

And bade our columns waver not, 

For yet no chance was gone. 

“ Oh, friends! ye’ve seen that great, good man, 
Whose glory makes our pride. 

Borne onward in a people’s van. 

With triumph at his side ; 

But nobler looked he in the fray, 

And prouder was his face. 


451 


The Story of Monmouth Fight. 

As there he bade us wash away 
In victory our disgrace. 

“Lee lives, his day of honor done, • 
Because he dared, that day, 

To speak hard words to Washington ; 

And well, oh friends, he may ! — 

For sad defeat had rested long 
Upon old Monmouth’s name. 

Had Washington not curbed his wrong 
And showed us all our shame. 

“ We pressed them backward, foot by foot. 
Still fighting like brave men, — 

Till long ere sunset we had put 
The foe to rout, again ; 

But warily did Clinton draw 
His broken troops away, 

And with two armies, at nightfa’, 

Upon the field we lay. 

“ The evening wind came fresh and cool 
Over the clover- farms. 

As all that night, so worn and dull. 

We rested on our arms : 

The fires were bright in Clinton’s camp ; 

But long ere morning’s dawn 
His beaten host was on the tramp, 

And all our foes were gone. 

“ I ween he thinks of Monmouth ground 
With less delight than we. 

And seldom tells the check he found 
To those beyond the sea ; 

But ne’er again may cannon sweep 
Where waves the golden grain, - 
And ne’er again an army sleep 
Upon old Monmouth’s plain ! ” 


452 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


Thus much of the poetical, in connection with this 
battle, which without doubt saw some of the keenest 
fighting of the whole struggle. In plain prose, the 
story of the conflict, so far as it may be deduced 
from already-written history and the still-remembered 
relations of those who took part in it, maybe almost 
as briefly told. 

It can only be guessed that Sir Henry Clinton, who 
had originally intended to leave Philadelphia by sea 
for New York, changed his plans in that regard, par- 
tially in apprehension of the French fleet, and par- 
tially under the fear that Washington might move 
more rapidly by land than he could do by sea, reach 
New York in advance of him, and possibly re-capture 
that most important hold before his arrival. How 
well advised and how ready for movement the Amer- 
icans were, is shown by the fact that while Clinton 
did not leave Philadelphia until the i8th June, on 
the evening of the same day Washington commenced 
breaking up his camp at Valley Forge and prepared 
to push forward in pursuit. 

What was really the force in this instance carried 
by Washington into the Jerseys, has been variously 
stated. His whole effective muster is known to have 
been between twelve and fifteen thousand. A'small 
detachment was sent, under the crippled Arnold, to 
take possession of Philadelphia ; and other necessary 
details somewhat reduced the effective force, which 
was, however, more numerous than it had been when 
encamping at Valley Forge, and with the additions 
of a strong body of New Jersey militia under General 
Dickinson, and a considerable corps of Pennsylvania 
volunteers under General Cadwallader. At no pre- 
vious time of the Revolution had the personal hands 


The Story of Monmouth Fight. 453 

of Washington been so strengthened as at this mo- 
ment, as appeared; for with Charles Lee second in 
command, and the presence of Greene, Wayne. La- 
fayette, Steuben, Maxwell, Hamilton, Morgan, and 
others only inferior to them in reputation as warriors, 
even that small army must have seemed incalculably 
stronger than indicated by its mere numbers. Some- 
what too late it afterwards became evident that this 
array of leaders rather weakened than strengthened 
the army, the counsels of so many being opposed to 
the opinions of the Commander, with other evils of 
partizanship necessarily involved. 

Any attempt to measure the force with which 
Clinton left Philadelphia, for his march across the 
Jerseys, must be even more futile. The patriot re- 
lators, after the war, habitually set his numbers at 
eighteen to twenty thousand — fifty to seventy per 
cent, above those of Washington ; but later develope- 
ments made it doubtful whether the Americans were 
really at all outnumbered, while there was a certain 
supposed demoralization in the British force, already 
alluded to, considered inevitable from their winter in 
Philadelphia, but by no means shown in their com- 
bined dash and steadiness on the day of battle. 

Clinton crossed the Delaware, to Gloucester Point, 
a short distance below Camden, on the New Jersey 
side, on the i8th. Washington followed, crossing the 
Delaware at Coryell’s Ferry, a little above Trenton, 
two days later, on the 20th. Sir Henry pursued his 
course across the State, nearly in a direct line for the 
Raritan at New Brunswick, by Haddonfield and 
Mount Holly, to some extent harrassed by the New 
Jersey militia and irregular bodies, but not seriously 
troubled through that agency. Washington pushed 


454 The Spur of Monmouth, 

forward at some distance on his left, by the Somerset 
region, only bending southward when he found him- 
self as far advanced as his foe — Clinton then halting 
at Allentown and changing his own line of march 
also to the southward, by Monmouth Court-House, 
(Freehold) for Middletown, Sandy Hook and the sea, 
evidently to avoid an engagement. 

From the moment of discovering that disposition 
on the part of Clinton, Washington, who had so far 
been overruled by his leading officers as to the ad- 
visability of hazarding an attack in force, determined 
to adhere to his first resolution — to overtake Clinton, 
partially pass him, and attack him in flank at the 
earliest possible moment. With this object in view, 
he diverged southward, then also tending towards 
Monmouth Court-House, rightly divining the second 
line of march of the enemy. The result of all this 
was that on the 27th June, Sir Henry Clinton en- 
camped his forces in the immediate neighborhood of 
Freehold, with his line extended some three miles 
beyond that town to the west, towards Allentown, 
and about half that distance to the east, towards 
Middletown and Shrewsbury. Washington formed 
his camp, the same night, at and near Englishtown, 
three or four miles westward, with Morgan’s corps 
of riflemen thrown forward on the right, and the 
New Jersey militia, under Dickinson, similarly ad- 
vanced on the left. It has long been well known 
that the American commander intended to force an 
engagement on the following day, and that the British 
commander, though anxious to avoid the combat, 
had yet made all preparations to repel any attack, in 
whatever force. 

The onset of the Americans, to command any hope 


455 


The Story of Monmouth Fight, 

of success, required to be made at once, as the pat- 
riot general well understood— as another day’s march 
of the British would bring them within shelter of the 
hills below Freehold, towards Middletown, where any 
assault must be made at a marked disadvantage. The 
division intended for the attack was thrown forward 
to Englishtown under Lafayette; but at that place, 
on the 27th, Lee was ordered to join him with two 
brigades, and as senior officer both in years and com- 
mand, to assume charge of the whole attacking 
division. Those familiar with the late past events of 
this narration, cannot choose but to admire the action 
of Washington towards his jealous subordinate, in 
this instance ; and yet little doubt remains that this 
generosity was an error, and that the young French 
general, then in the hot blood of his youth, and pos- 
sessing military talents afterwards destined to display 
themselves so preeminently, should have been allowed 
to remain in command, for an enterprise peculiarly 
requiring dash and vigor. As if to make the error 
more disastrous in its effects, the Commander-in-chief 
(as was afterwards known), gave to Lee discretionary 
power as to the time and mode of making the attack, 
little warranted by the after-conduct of that officer. 

Washington’s intention, as already indicated, was to 
attack in force, early in the morning of the 28th, ac 
the moment when the royal army should resume their 
line of march eastward for the seaboard. In the be- 
ginning, this programme was vigorously carried out, 
Lee ordering Morgan and Dickinson very near to the 
British, as corps of observation, long before daylight, 
and himself moving to the attack at the moment when 
the first movement of the enemy was in progress. 
With him were the brigades of Wayne and Maxwell, 


456 


The Spur of Monmouth, 


while Grayson, with two picked brigades, was ordered 
forward to attack the British pickets and create con- 
fusion in the rear. So far, all had gone well for the 
patriots, and the success of their operations seemed 
literally assured. 

The Americans had pressed forward to some miles 
beyond or eastward of Monmouth Court-House, when 
that occurred, marring the fortunes of the day if not 
altogether changing them. Clinton, with a spirit he 
did not always manifest, changed front with great 
celerity, and signified his intention of making a 
return attack in force, instead of allowing his rear 
to be possibly cut off through inaction. Lee, unpre- 
pared for this counter-movement, and deceived as to 
the real intention, halted his force at the critical mo- 
ment, and began to give ground, to the infinite 
chagrin and mortification* of Wayne, commanding 
under him. Lafayette, coming up with the main body 
of the advanced corps, believed the moment a favor- 
able one for gaining the rear of that division of the 
enemy moving against them ; but the caution of Lee 
prevailed, the previously-attacking force fell back 
before the advancing British, thus driven beyond the 
Court House, in the direction of the old Tennant 
Church, some four miles northwestward of Freehold. 
Here it was that the tide of reverse was at last stem- 
med, through the coming up of Washington at the 
head of the main body, pressing on to what he be- 
lieved was victory in advance ; and here it is that in 
all the years which have since gone by, the “ battle- 
ground of Monmouth ” has been located, in the num- 
berless relations of the events of that day. 

Here it was that the battle really became general, 
both combatants displaying bravery and determina- 


The Story of Monmouth Fight. 


457 


tion never elsewhere excelled during the war. Here 
it was, that, around the Tennant Parsonage, and over 
fields and behind woods and hedgerows in the neigh- 
borhood, bush-fighting mingled with the ordinary- 
tactics of civilized war, and the deadly aim of the 
sharp-shooter came into destructive prominence. 
Here it was that Wayne, half-crazed by the reverse 
which he believed the result of a blunder, raged in 
arms, in a manner to strengthen his soubriquet of 
“Mad Anthony.” Here it was that the brave British 
Colonel Monckton fell, leading his grenadiers against 
Wayne with a steadiness worthy of his grave in the 
Tennant Churchyard and the admiration ever since 
expressed for him by his foes. Here it was that be- 
neath the heat of the burning day, and in the fierce 
excitement of the battle, scores fell and died without 
the touch of bullet or blade, while scores of others 
perished in the morass then intersecting a part of the 
battle-field lying between the Tennant Church and 
the Parsonage. 

Here it was — most notable of all single events of 
the day — that Washington met Lee in retreat, a mile 
eastward of the Parsonage, on the Freehold road, and 
hurled at him, in his surprise and indignation, words 
much more natural and much more forcible than so- 
called propriety has attributed to him, in the tradi- 
tional formula : “ Sir, I desire to know the reason of 
this unseemly retreat, and whence arises this disorder 
and confusion ! ” No such words formed the first 
greeting of the Commander-in-chief to his subordi- 
nate, in that moment of inevitable grief and anger : 
if the real words even involved profanity and insult, 
as the sharers in that memorable scene heard and oft 
repeated them, who shall blame the man on whose 
20 


45 S The Spur of Monmouth. 

shoulders lay the destinies of a nation ? — and who shall 
recall them at this day, for that carping and critical 
dissection to which every expression of human feel- 
ing seems of late amenable ? How they were an- 
swered by “ Boiling Water ” of this chronicle, and 
what effect the after-conduct of Charles Lee with 
reference to them had upon his position and closing 
life, — this has been too often and too accurately told to 
need repetition. 

Enough that thereafter Lee, however much he had 
erred, bore himself with great though boastful gal- 
lantry throughout the remainder of the action. 
Enough that from the moment of Washington’s com- 
ing, however hard to undo the error of an hour, the 
tide of battle remained at a standstill, if it did not at 
once flow in favor of the patriots. When the night 
fell, the palm of assured victory was almost within 
the grasp of the patriot commander, and only the 
one question remained whether Clinton was or was 
not too much crippled to resume his march towards 
Sandy Hook. Only the broken character of the 
ground thwarted Washington’s intention of testing 
his strength, by yet another attack after nightfall : 
with such impediments, and in the exhausted state 
of his troops, the second attack was deferred until 
morning. Both forces lay on their arms, very near 
each other, but a little west of Monmouth Court 
House, when the night came on ; but when the morn- 
ing broke, the British camp was deserted, and the 
harrassed hosts of Clinton were beyond the Court 
House and out of reach, having left so silently that 
even General Poor, in command of the American 
advanced corps, had no suspicion of the intention or 
its fulfilment. With this departure and virtual escape 


459 


The Story of Monmouth Fi'^ht. 

of the British, necessarily the combat was at an end. 
Clinton pursued his way, by the hills of Middletown, 
to Sandy Hook and the fleet of Lord Howe, which 
bore his troops away to New York ; and Washington, 
his enemy driven from the Jerseys if no more, marched 
northward with his army to New Brunswick, and 
thence to the Hudson, and to White Plains in West- 
chester, destined to be so notable in the later con- 
flicts preceding the close. 

Thus ended Monmouth Fight, a drawn battle in 
some regards, and yet by no means so in its effect, 
already more than once stated. So far as human 
opinion can be final, it would have proved a decisive 
victory, but for the one error of Washington in en- 
trusting so much of discretion to Lee, who, with a 
thousand desirable qualities, of this had none; for 
the one error of Lee, in believing that Clinton dared 
an attack in force, instead of a mere effort to save his 
baggage ; and for the one additional error, for which 
no responsible agent has ever yet been found, which 
held Morgan, the hero of the Carolinian Cowpens 
and chief of the terrible riflemen bearing his name, 
within three or four miles of the place of conflict 
during all that memorable day, hearing the sounds 
of the battle, waiting orders to fall on the flank of 
the enemy, receiving none, and fuming out his ardent 
soul in wonder and rage, while remembering the one 
instance in which he had gone beyond the commands 
of Washington, with its bitter finale, — and thus not 
daring to place himself and his hunting-shirts where 
the aid of all was so sorely needed. 

There have been scores of legendary incidents at- 
tached to the battle of Monmouth, with which, in this 
relation, we have no more to do than merely to pay 


460 


The Spur of Momnouth, 


them the respect of recognition. The world has heard, 
and heard again, the story of Moll Pitcher, who fought 
the gun of her dead cannonier husband and afterwards 
wore the uniform and received the half-pay of a ser- 
geant in the service. Many hearts have sorrowed 
over the fate of the poor young British officer, whose 
blood yet to-day stains one of the seats of the old 
Tennant Church, where he was carried to die, and 
where he died with such touching last words on his 
lips. Though the incident has often been related as 
of another Forman — General David of that name — 
not all know how nearly Bessie Wayne-Forman came 
that day to being a widow, when Lewis Forman, serv- 
ing with his Light-Horse, and with his pistols emptied 
and his sword splintered in his hand, was chased 
through the open door of a harvest-barn by a British 
trooper intent on a blow at him, and only escaped by 
the matchless horsemanship which could hold his 
horse steady while that of his foe went down on the 
slippery oaken surface. 

Not all know that Susan Allardyce that day met her 
fate — being rescued from momentary danger by Major 
Robert Pomeroy, a young officer of the Maryland 
brigade, quite the equal of her lost idol in size and 
stature, while much more refined in bearing, — with 
whom she fell her whole moderate length in love, at 
once, the Major reciprocating, and the daughter of 
Captain John Allardyce becoming at a later day at 
once a bride and a Marylander, rather glad than the 
reverse that she had failed to capture the fancy of 
Lewis Forman. Not all know how Marc Antony, 
who had the preceding day served up a hive of bees 
as dessert to some foraging British officers who forced 
themselves on the hospitality of the Wayne-Forman 


The Siory of Monmouth Fight. 461 

mansion in the absence of its master, — on the day of 
the battle armed himself with the old king’s-piece 
belonging to “ de family, sah ! ” and went out shoot- 
ing from behind hedges, his game, if any, remaining 
where it fell. Nor how Bessie Forman, jestingly 
called upon for a blessing by the same officers as they 
set foot in stirrup to ride away, blessed them with the 
hope “that Morgan’s riflemen might catch them 
before they reached Sandy Hook.” 

These, though they naturally come back to mind 
in recalling the relations of the time and the event 
by the men who bore part in it, are little more than 
shadows floating around the event itself. It remains 
to embody one special circumstance of the night 
that fell so slowly on Monmouth battle-field, of no 
secondary interest as bearing forward this chronicle 
to its conclusion. 


CHAPTER XLV. 

WHAT THE SPUR OF MONMOUTH REVEALED. 

Some two miles northward from the Tennant Par- 
sonage, on what was thus so suddenly made the 
battle-field of Monmouth, stood a small farm-house, 
beyond the estate of the mere log-dwelling* and yet 
only of timber and clapboards, and evidently the abode 
of persons in moderate circumstances or those of 
peculiar modesty. Near it ran the road, scarcely a 
highway, coming down from the northward at Amboy 
to Englishtown ; though the moderate travel of that 
road, and the locatfon of the house within a railed 
enclosure of some size, through which only a closed 
private way ran down to the main thoroughfare, made 
it the reverse of public or exposed. The undecayed 
stumps of trees still thickly dotting the clearing, 
gave evidence' that the bit of ground had not very 
long before been reclaimed from the forest ; and the 
small size and humble appearance of the out-build- 
ings, almost adjoining the low-roofed house, showed 
as well that the farmer who occupied the steading 
was not likely to cultivate any large number of acres. 
The surroundings of war removed, however, it would 
have seemed a comfoi table residence for one of un- 
ambitions aspirations ; and brief as had been the space 
since the erection of the building, the home-suggest- 
ing sod had found time to ornament the grounds 
immediately in front, and a few common and hardy 


What the Spur of Monmouth Revealed. 463 

flowers grew under the windows and were trained up 
the narrow and unpretentious porch. 

This abode, standing as calmly in the air of the 
warm June evening, as if never a conflict of warring 
men had raged almost at the doors, was that of Joseph 
Barclay, truly a small farmer, and yet perhaps a cul- 
tivator of no moderate success in his humble field and 
a widely different way from the agricultural,— the oc- 
cupant joining with the care of his few and half- 
cleared acres, the standing of a lay-preacher in the 
Methodist denomination, the duty of supplying the 
service-desk of a log school-house half a mile dis- 
tant in the edge of the pine woods, and the self-ap- 
pointed task of being confidant and comforter, at one 
time and another, to half the scattered residents 
within a circuit of many miles. 

Perhaps quite as much from surrounding circum- 
stances as from temperament, Joseph Barclay had 
taken no active share in the contest between the 
colonies and the mother-country ; and it might have 
been difficult, in the minds of most, to decide in which 
of the two directions he really inclined. Thus the 
foe of neither party, though no doubt often objur- 
gated for lukewarmness by the more fiery adherents 
of both, probably no residence within the State was 
less likely than his to be visited by violent hands, 
whatever the predominating influence in his neigh- 
borhood ; and the knowledge of this it had been, in- 
ducing Indian John, on the rumored approach of the 
armies, to place his niece under the charge of the 
preacher and his family, until such time as the cloud 
of local war should sweep by, and they be enabled to 
carry out the plan already announced, of quitting the 
troubled land and taking the first available convey- 
ance for their English home. 


464 


The spur of Mon7nouth. 


Truth to say, Indian John, in thus placing one 
‘whom he loved so tenderly, had scarcely calculated 
upon the contending armies coming so near — all 
probability, at the time of it, three days before the 
battle, indicating that if the two forces met they 
would do so much further to the northward, at least 
so far away as the borders of Middlesex. However, 
the directions of both those armies, if not the inten- 
tions of those in command, had materially changed, 
as we have already seen in rapidly scanning the 
events and omens of the ‘previous chapter ; and the 
Chief of the Delawares, few of whose scattered tribe 
were then in the neighborhood, had suffered the 
anxiety, going forth on the morning of the 28th to 
that scout-service in which he was known and de- 
pended upon by, Washington as so invaluable, of 
doubting whether Catharine Trafford was really much 
safer in such shelter, with the battle likely to rage at 
her very door, than she would have been if she had 
remained in* his wigwam, however untenable for a 
refined woman, and with only the guard of Bruno at 
the door. 

During the battle-day, however, the house of her 
retirement had been unscathed in the conflict, though 
firing at times had come very near, and in two or 
three instances the red coats of the British soldiers 
and the faded blue-and-buff and rough hunting-shirts 
of the patriots had been seen to pass the road at so 
little distance. Nearly all day the roar of the con- 
tending cannon had been heard, most of the time to 
the eastward, but occasionally in directions that 
seemed to surround them ; and nearly all day as well, 
Joseph Barclay, his wife and two children, with two 
or three of the frightened females from less-favored 


IVAa/ the Spur of Mo 7 i 7 nouth Revealed. 465 

houses at no great distance, had spent the time within 
the hot and uncomfortable house, with only occasional 
and hurried out-looks upon the warring and jarring 
outer world. And literally all that day, Catharine 
Trafford, her spirit so blended of the masculine and 
the feminine that while she longed to be in the midst 
of the fray she shuddered at the thought of the car- 
nage and prayed hopelessly for the safety of those 
dear to her who might be in the thick of the conflict, 
— had kept the humble apartment respectfully as- 
signed to her use, mechanically taken the coarse food 
provided and brought in for her, and measured the 
long hours with some feeling that they must be cen- 
turies in that transparent disguise. 

Once, in the early afternoon, Indian John, his duty 
bringing him near, had come in, long rifle in hand 
and his face rendered even darker by the powder- 
stains settled upon it, to look after the welfare of the 
household, and of Bruno, who had been induced, with 
some ditflculty, to take up his temporary residence 
in an out-house. He had brought a hurried word of 
the accidents and reverses of the day, only told to 
Catharine and blindly indicated to the others, — kissed 
the white brow of his niece with lips that left a 
smirch, then shouldered his rifle, lit the rude pipe of 
his lodge, and gone away again — to his duty: to what 
else or to what fate, she could not know. 'What 
could she know, indeed, of the welfare of any? — of 
her darling brother Walter, no doubt forgetting the 
bridegroom in the soldier, and perilling his life with 
the old dash and daring of the Traffords? What — 
say of Captain Anstruther, who could not well be 
elsewhere than in the fray, and with whom she had 
held, the previous winter, so many conferences in the 
20* 


466 The Spur of Monmouth'. 

closed room at Cedar Grove ? What of Charles Lee 
— (rejected lover — but what woman does not value 
such beyond those whom she accepts ?) so certain to 
be in the very maddest exposure ? What of— ah, how 
differently came the question, recurring at such brief 
intervals and seeming always to choke the questioner 
with the same pang of newness that it had borne at 
first !— what of Colonel George Vernon, military aide 
as well as chaplain and secretary, and necessarily in 
the very thickest danger at the side of the rider of 
the white horse? What of him? — and yet, what to 
her what of him ? Of him who had seemed to love 
her dearly — ay, who could do no otherwise, as she 
knew, than so to love her; of him to whom she had 
given in full measure the idolatry of a heart all the 
more ardent because long torpid and difficult to stir; 
but of him who had never asked her to link her fate 
with his and make the rapturous stolen moments of 
the past the glorious acknowledged right of the long 
future ? 

Oh, those tedious, hot, weary hours — punctuated 
alike by heavy heart-beats and frightful cannon-peals ! 
She tried, spite of the Sabbath time, to engross her 
thoughts upon a pitiful bit of needlework, that had 
neither purpose nor occasion ; she tried to read, in 
the pages of some dingy but rare old religious books 
on the shelf of her room ; she tried to understand 
and thank the solicitude of the preacher’s wife, who 
occasionally came in to reassure her — against what she 
never knew, and with a face that was likely to effect 
the very opposite. And all, herself and her situation 
with the rest, formed an unreality ; a dimness with 
some of the features of the vision ; an endless change 
of thought, feeling and emotion, that only needed 


IVAa^ the Spur of Monmouth Revealed. 467 

more horrid colors to take the places of the brighter 
so often recurring, to become an actual phantasma- 
goria. 

Once, late in the afternoon, there was one moment 
of intelligent interest. That was when the sound of 
the battle seemed to be nearest, yet without an)’- of 
its deadly or dangerous features having come into 
view, — and when Joseph Barclay, late resolved upon 
a duty which seemed to have been delayed at the in- 
tercession of his family, put into his pocket a Testa- 
ment which had no doubt been used on many mourn- 
ful occasions, and took his way from the house toward 
what he believed to be the direction of the conflict, 
intent to soothe with spiritual consolation the last 
moments of any wounded man, of either side, upon 
whom he might chance to fall. Such calm, non-com- 
batant heroism is always sublime. Catharine Traffbrd 
felt the impression, and was for the moment interested 
beyond herself, — to fall back again, when the preacher 
had departed on his errand of mercy, into that un- 
explainable blending of personal apathy and nervous 
excitement, inseparable from knowledge of the peril 
of those we love, with no power to lift hand or raise 
voice in their behalf. 

At last fell the dusk— that long delayed dusk, com- 
ing so welcomely to Clinton and so before its time to 
Washington. With its falling, by degrees the boom 
of the cannon died away, and the calmness of even- 
ing came down, as if on a world that had never 
known the curse of Cain. By degrees, too, what of 
sound from the family there had been in the adjoin- 
ing room, grew to be a faint hum and ceased. Is it 
strange that, overstrained for so many hours, the bow 
relaxed, without any touch on the string that the 


468 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


thought-wearied woman fell away to sleep on the 
wooden settee of Mistress Barclay, undisturbed as if 
she had again become an infant and that hard couch 
was a down-pillowed cradle ? 

How long she had slept before awaking, she did 
not at the latter moment know— indeed never quite 
knew, in all her remaining life. When she woke, it 
was certainly well on in the late evening — perhaps in 
the neighborhood of midnight. The door between 
her apartment and that without, leading to the house- 
entrance, was partially open, and the wife of the 
preacher stood in it, with a candle. There was another 
figure, behind the matron, only dimly seen. As the 
latter set down the light on the table, with a word of 
apology for disturbing her guest, went out and closed 
the door behind her, — Catharine Trafford, at last 
aroused and rising from the settee, saw the figure ex- 
pand and grow into distinctness, and knew that the 
comer was Colonel George Vernon ! 

The noble face was lined, weary and anxious : a 
keener eye than that observing might have believed 
that it was a trifle discolored, as that the soldierly 
costume of blue-and-buff was certainly less neat and 
careful than as generally worn. But what mattered 
this trifle, or the momentary clink of the scabbard 
and click of a spur, which seemed to come at the 
same instant? One of the questions of long anxiety 
was answered, if the others were never to be. Who- 
ever might have fallen in Monmouth Fight, the chap- 
lain and secretary of the Commander-in-chief was 
alive, apparently unwounded, and within that sud- 
denly-glorified room. The woman of the stately 
presence and golden-brown hair rather staggered 
forward than advanced with her usual step, as the 


What the Spur of Monmouth Revealed, 469 

full assurance of his safety took the place of late-past 
fears; and, as the Continental officer opened and ex- 
tended his arms without a word, so the lady of his 
love fell wordless into them and nestled the tired, 
anxious head on the broad shoulder. 

To some degree this has been a story of revelations, 
and even more of deductions. But there can be, in 
the present instance, neither the one nor the other. 
No thicker mantle ol mystery shrouds the years so 
long gone into the past, or the motives of those whose 
conduct the world has agreed in pronouncing in- 
scrutable, than that which lies upon the last hour 
ever passed by Colonel George Vernon in the com- 
pany of Catharine Trafford. Perhaps that hour grew 
to two : the members of the Barclay family, that night 
necessarily sleepless in their anxiety as to the uncon- 
cluded battle, afterwards averred that the Continental 
officer remained for at least the longer period. But 
it came to an end, as all the periods of human life 
must do — happy, painful, or blended of both. When 
they parted, the soldier knew, with a sinking of the 
heart which he had never before known in life and 
never knew again, that the errand in America of him 
whom he had known and trusted as Indian John, 
was done, and that his niece was going away with him 
to the old home in England — any after meeting be- 
tween them to be unlikely — nay, literally impossible. 
When they parted, with the rounded white arms for 
the last time around the manly neck for which they 
seemed to have been formed from the hour of birth, 
Catharine Trafford blindly understood that there was 
that between them which held them apart for life — 
understood the meaning if she did not know the 
words of that plaint derived from the German, which 


470 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


so blends triumph with suffering: “I have lived!— 
I have loved ! ” 

The door so unexpectedly opened had closed again. 
The unexpected guest was gone — oh God! — how 
truly and irrevocably gone ; to come back no more 
forever, as the bereaved woman knew but too well. 
And then for a full hour she sat alone, with her chin 
resting on those shapely large hands, and the glorious 
eyes looking into the vacancy of dumb grief. Then 
there was another stir in the outer apartment, how- 
ever late, — the door again opened, and Indian John 
(so for the last time he comes to us) once more en- 
tered. The candle was dimly burning on the table ; 
and he saw the rapt, hopeless attitude of his niece. 
Even before he spoke, as he came toward her, his foot 
struck some metallic object on the floor, that jingled 
from the blow. He stooped and took it up, the 
movement at last arousing the half-dazed woman, 
and even the faint light showing the shape and glit- 
ter of a silver spur. 

Still without a word, the chief brought it nearer to 
the candle, with the eyes of his niece curiously re- 
garding him the while. He held it still nearer, turned 
it over, and said : 

“ This spur } How came it here, Catharine } ” 

“ That spur ? Is it a spur } I did not know that it 
was there. Was it on the floor ? Ah, then, give it to 
me. It must have dropped from the heel of one whom 
I shall probably never see again, and I should like to 
preserve it.” 

“ Whose heel ? ” He was regarding it very closely ; 
and his voice grew hoarse and troubled, like that of 
one in great agitation. 

“ Whose, uncle You seem very earnest and im- 


What the Spur of Monmouth Revealed. 471 

perative ! There has been but one here, who could 
have dropped it. Colonel Vernon seemed to know 
that we were going away, and I think came to say 
good-bye.” 

“ And this was his ? ” 

“ I do not know. But it must have been. Have 
we not said enough about so small a thing? Give it 
me.” 

“ Good God, niece of mine, do you know what you 
are saying ! ” broke out the pseudo-Indian, in uncon- 
trollable emotion, seizing the arm of Catharine and 
drawing her near the light before which he held up 
the object which had so excited him. “ I have seen 
that spur, and its mate, on other heels than those 
you guess. Do you see these amethysts that stud 
it .? Did you ever learn your alphabet ?— and do you 
not know that ‘ G. W.’ stands for the name of George 
Vernon’s master, not George Vernon? ” 

Catharine Traflford looked ; she but too well under- 
stood all that had before been so dark and mysterious. 
She made a clutch at the spur ; then recoiled from 
it; then broke into wild hysterical tears, the first 
that her relative had ever seen her shed ; then fell 
on the settee, and grew for the moment stonily still. 

“ It is time, indeed, niece,” he said, in the same 
hoarse and intense voice with which he had just 
asked the name of the owner of the spur — “ time, in- 
deed, for us to go back to England ! ” 

Before the surprised woman could quite recognize 
what he was about to do, Indian John had suddenly 
flung wide the door leading to the grounds without, 
dashed the spur away into the darkness with the full 
force of his muscular arm, then again closed the door 
and was at her side. Among the shrubbery where 


472 


The Spur of Mo7i7nouih, 


the tell-tale landed, it would seem to have remained 
undiscovered for something like three quarters of a 
century, to come to sight again, at last, and supply a 
key that might otherwise have been still wanting, to 
a character in many regards inexplicable and in still 
more misunderstood. 

“ I wish that I had never seen that spur — that I had 
never known ! ” was the significant utterance of the 
uncle, as he came back to the side of his niece. 
“ But what we know and do not desire to know, we 
have only to forget,” he added, kissing her on the 
brow, as he took one of the shapely white hands in 
his, with a pressure that told alike of understanding 
and fidelity. 

“And /am proud to know!” Catharine Trafford 
exclaimed, springing from the settee with such vigor 
as if his words had been a challenge to her woman- 
hood, and drawing her tall form to its full and stately 
height. “You had no right to throw away what I 
should have treasured more than an}'^ jewel that ever 
belonged to our race. I will find it again, if I can, 
to-morrow. No, I am not ashamed of having loved 
him, ay, of loving him still, with all my heart and all 
my soul. For so he loved me, and so he loves me 
this night — I know it, though we shall never meet 
again ; and it is worth something to have been loved 
by the noblest man of all the world ! A queen might 
have been his fit love-mate : who had the right t-o be 
his wife ? ” 


CHAPTER XLVI. 


IN A MILL OF THE GODS. 

Sometimes at the eleventh hour, ay, even so late 
as the twelfth, the appointed Fate of the old Greeks 
stalks into the arena. It has many forms, and often 
it is not recognized when it appears — only being taken 
for some tragic mummer who simulates destiny but 
can do nothing to forward the issue. Some illustra- 
tion of this may be apparent, in however humble a 
way, before closing what may probably be among the 
last recollections, even at second hand, of the Amer- 
ican Revolution. 

It was somewhat late in the afternoon of one of 
those drizzling days of September, 1778, when long 
continued rains were filling the dried streams and 
atoning for the great heat and extended drought of 
the summer, — that Marc Antony came to what he 
believed to be the crowning duty of his life — some- 
thing of which, questioned in advance, he would have 
said: “ Dunno nuffin ’bout all dem rules and regum- 
lations dat you’s a talkin’ about ! No, sah ! Got to do 
it, sah ! Yes, foh suah ! ” 

On that occasion, Marc Antony, using the force of 
the swelling streams in sawing certain needed timber 
in the little water-mill lying back in the woods and 
belonging to the Wayne-Forman family, saw Richard 
Foy coming through the trees and making for the 
place of his employment. Within the three months 


474 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


elapsing since the murder of the brook, the encount- 
ers of the two parties had not been many, but pecu- 
liar to both. Foy, remaining with his poor wife in 
Monmouth, after the ruin of his evil hopes and some 
other happenings yet to be noticed, had first met the 
negro with blank surprise and terror, concealed with 
difficulty, in the belief that he was an actual ghost, 
come back to haunt him for his crime. Then followed 
the discovery that Julius Cesar had instead been the 
victim of his rage and fear, at the same time that the 
calm and apparently unconscious demeanor of the 
negro satisfied him of the innocence of the latter in 
the matter of the exhumed box, and gave him the 
pleasant assurance that he had become the murderer 
of the wrong man, without cause, and literally (worst 
feature of all !) without any benefit to himself. How- 
ever, thereafter he had the advantage of conscience- 
less and undetected guilt — to some natures perhaps 
the highest boon ever accorded by liberal Fortune ; — 
and he could meet, and did meet, the man whom he 
had drowned in intention, without any troublesome 
qualms or tremors. 

As for Marc Antony, incarnation of the African 
(again remembered as an oriental) in every detail of 
his complex nature, — his meetings with Foy, through- 
out, had been carefully guarded — it may be said, 
laboriously calculated. Sure of the deadly guilt of 
which he had been almost a witness, as well as of the 
fact that the murder had been intended for himself — 
recoiling with a blending of hate and terror at the 
very sight of the murderer, all the more because su- 
perstitious to the last capability of his superstitious 
race — steeped to the lips in as terrible a determina- 
tion of ultimate revenge, whenever the time and place 


In a Mill of the Gods. 


475 


should come, as ever his Malay cousin could have 
been— waiting for his opportunity with that fierce 
suppressed impatience literally burning the souls as 
well as the bodies of the untrained and the impul- 
sive,— Marc Antony, under all these difficult condi- 
tions, could “smile, and smile,” with full intent to be 
the “ villain ” of a certain antique type, whenever the 
day should come, predestined in the Obi and bringing 
the duty laid upon him by relentless- Jumbo-Jum. 
So utterly blank was his black face, at such meetings, 
of any knowledge that could be dangerous to Foy, 
or of any intention capable of working harm to that 
undetected criminal, that after the second rencontre 
and the second half-laughing greeting, the homicide 
dismissed all fear, as he had long before dismissed all 
those moral qualities capable of bringing it into 
beneficial activity. Could he but have seen the comic 
yet diabolical contortions of the negro’s face, more 
than once, after their meeting, he might better have 
understood the harmless regard borne towards him- 
self, even if he lacked power to check the rolling 
wheels of the Inevitable. 

He came into the little mill, that September day, 
in very idleness and as a shelter from the drizzling 
rain. Marc Antony received him with smiles, and 
what would have been “ effusion ” in the sharer of 
some southern-European blood. He insisted upon 
his guest being seated on a log, while he went on with 
his operations of sawing through the piece of timber 
then on the “ways.” Then he grew doubly hospit- 
able, brought out a small black jug half filled with 
whiskey, and urged the contents upon Foy while him- 
self pantomiming to drink and really taking care to 
make pretended draughts and remain safely sober. 


476 


The spur of Monmouth. 


This repeated two or three times, until Foy was com- 
fortably intoxicated and his entertainer apparently 
so, while really more alert and dangerously-capable 
than at any previous moment of his life. 

Then the “ ways ” required moving back, to allow 
of putting on another log ; and Marc Antony grew 
unaccountably weak and needed assistance, which 
Foy the less grudgingly rendered from his previous 
free imbibation of the whiskey. Then the removal of 
the lever lifting the water-gate, required the opening 
of the trap, some three feet square, in the mill-floor 
and above the closed bay of ten feet of black water 
beneath, shut in on all sides by a grating of thick 
oaken laths against the floating in of any stray log 
from without. Then, suddenly as unaccountably, 
Richard Foy tripped over a bit of timber, lost footing, 
and went head-foremost through the trap into the 
deep bay beneath. Even his dulled senses for that 
one awful moment realized that the trip was not all 
accidental and that he was being pushed into that 
hopeless abyss, where without help he could at best 
but keep above the black water for. a few horrible 
moments, clutching at the slimy and slippery laths, 
losing strength, hold and life together, and drowning 
like a rat in a cask, or — God of all mercy, the 
thought \—like a miserable negro in a brook. 

“ Pore ole Julius ! — nebber come back no more, 
and I’se dreffle lonesome widout him — dat am a fac ! 
But dat ere Foy’s done gone and tumbled in hissef, 
’pears to me; and I clar to man I don’t 'blieve he’ll 
ebber get out, ’less somebody comes dat can swim ! 
/ can’t swim — nebber know’d how. ’Spects to de 
debbil when you sees him ! — dis nigger’s day’s work’s 
done, and he’s a goin home, suah ! ” 


In a Mill of the Gods. 


477 


This may the dulled and struggling senses, too, 
have heard, descending through the slats of the floor, 
as the trap fell with a sharp slam and the avenger 
closed the last avenue of hope, if any had before re- 
mained open, by leaving the mill to its unvisited 
loneliness, shutting the door that no one else would 
be at all likely to unbar, arid going homeward to sup- 
per and “ de family.” 

So it was that the Fate came to Richard Foy, on 
that wet and dismal September day, and in that “ mill 
of the gods ” where he was “ground exceeding fine ” 
at the hands of a somewhat singular and unromantic 
comic-miller ! At a time when certain others who 
have figured in this relation, were occupying positions 
which require to be briefly noted in conclusion. 

When Sullivan had just raised the unfortunate siege 
of Newport, so nearly a trap and destruction for an 
army whose loss might at last have imperilled the 
whole contest. When Sir Henry Clinton, disap- 
pointed in the attempted capture of the patriot forces 
in Rhode Island, was ordering the burning of all 
American vessels that could be reached in eastern 
waters. When Washington, habitually successful in 
negotiation as determined in the field, was yet obliged 
to task every energy in allaying the jealousies between 
the French and native officers and forces, threatening 
at one time the most serious consequences, and 
scarcely reduced to amiability when the arduous 
campaign of 1778 closed by the winter e’ncampment of 
the patriot army at Middlebrook in Jersey. When the 
mourning over the Massacre of Wyoming was at last 
dying away from a scream to a wail, though sealing 
the eventual doom of a large portion of the aborigi- 
nes. When the French fleets were operating, with 


478 


The spur of Mon77iouth. 


home land-forces assisting, and all the while as it 
seemed ineffectively, along the whole coast from 
Boston to Charleston, before the departure of Count 
d’Estaing for the West Indies. When most of the 
traces of the late conflict had already disappeared 
from the plains of Monmouth, and what remained 
(though in truth many remained beyond expectation 
and belief) bade fair to be cleansed away from the 
earth by those welcome rains of September. When 
Arnold had assumed ^mmand in Philadelphia, taking 
on airs of costly splendor that would have been un- 
wise in a General-in-chief, preparing for the hollow 
shows that were to make the Philadelphians forget 
the Mischianza, and laying the foundations for his 
treason and Andre’s doom. 

When Sir Edmund Trenholm, so long known as 
Indian John and Nekaneshwa of the Delawares, and 
Catharine Trafford, burthened with the blended pride 
and grief of her late discovery, had gone home to 
England, to take the places which there belonged to 
them, and never again, either of the two, to revisit 
the scenes of the Revolution or meet any of those 
who had been the chief actors in it. When poor 
little Running Brier, lured away as much by the at- 
tachment as the finesse of the pseudo-chief, had 
escaped from the rough hand — now a cold one — of 
her cruel father, crossed the sea with her two pre- 
servers, and held an humble but happy place in Sir 
Edmund Treriholm’s household. When nearly all the 
dusky hue of his long masquerade had worn away 
from the face of the baronet, at last admitted to that 
place in his own home-land from which he had been 
so long debarred, and already looking back to the 
days of the little wigwam in the Monmouth woods. 


lit a Mill of the Gods. 


479 


and the hours of Indian gravity and basket- making, 
as a strange and unaccountable yet wondrously real 
dream. When the splendid eyes of the woman who 
had played so notable a part in Revolutionary history 
and in the life of the noblest actor in it, had dried 
from their hottest tears, if they never quite lost the 
softened and half-startled look that came into them 
after one January night at Cedar Grove. 

When Bessie Wayne- Forman and her mother had 
put away the first blinding and hopeles grief over 
the fate of beloved “ Daredevil Tom ; ” and the bride 
of Lewis Forman at times began to look for his re- 
turn from service against the enemy, with more 
anxiety than she quite understood, though the ex- 
planation came welcomely to her before the close of 
the year. When aunt Hepzibah Thorn had already 
grown satisfied once more, in the evidence that Susan 
Allardyce was really and truly weaned away from her 
old idol, through the coming of the Maryland officer 
who more than supplied his place, and whom she 
married, tyrannized over and made delirously happy, 
spite of the warlike occupation that engrossed him, 
before the coming of ’79. When Walter Hartshorne 
had slowly recovered from the effects of his imprison- 
ment and his mad effort for liberty, but had not again 
rejoined Huyler’s Men, the absence of poor Tom 
Wayne and the pleading tears of an anxious mother 
combining to oppose such an inclination if it really 
existed. When another Walter — Captain Walter 
Trafford, enraptured with the bride whom he had 
carried away, after the manner of the rough riders 
of old, over the snow of that January night, was 
growing tired of being so often and long separated 
from her, and planning that return home which he 


480 


The Spur of Monmouth. 


afterwards and happily accomplished, unwounded 
except in heart and military vanity. When Ephraim 
Reed was looking over the fields at his growing 
crops and wondering why people fought for a prin- 
ciple that he neither cared for nor understood, — and 
Hannah Reed, calm and sweet-faced as of old, sat on 
the porch of Cedar Grove, at peace with all the 
world though the country was at war, — and knitted 
on, apparently on the same perennial stocking. 

Then it was, and thus, that the Fate came, already 
recorded. And with its coming ends the duty of the 
chronicler ; as neither the personal relations, nor the 
yellowed and mouldering documents with which such 
necessary liberties have been taken, reach more than 
that three months beyond the Battle of Monmouth 
— that eight months following the mid-winter at Val- 
ley Forge. 


The old man's story has been a long one — tedious, 
discursive, often dry and unattractive, while not 
seldom combating receiyed opinions, and venturing 
statements and deductions which men more distant 
in feeling and experience from the time under review, 
would have been slow to make. Yet it has a charm, 
at this stage, to which many other and better-sus- 
tained relations cannot lay claim — whatever of labor 
and whatever of pleasure it has involved, with writer 
and reader, are equally at an end. To which also 
fast approaches him who writes, and— alas that this 
should follow ! — so many of those who read this 
Romance belonging to the Centennial, with bright 
eyes, and unwarned by whitening hair and fast-de- 
cayinaOu^iCd vigor. 


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